PRESS RELEASE – For Immediate Release
East Turkistan Government in Exile (ETGE)
East-Turkistan.Net
contact@East-Turkistan.Net
17 April 2025
The East Turkistan Government in Exile (ETGE) unequivocally condemns the operations of international hotel chains—IHG (InterContinental Hotels Group), Hilton, Marriott, Hyatt, and Wyndham—within Occupied East Turkistan, where the Chinese government is carrying out a systematic campaign of colonization and genocide.
These companies are not operating in ignorance. They are developing and maintaining hotels in areas controlled by the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps (XPCC), a paramilitary and colonial apparatus sanctioned by the United Kingdom, United States, Canada, and the European Union for its central role in implementing China’s genocidal and colonial policies. By participating in the Chinese state-led expansion of “tourism,” these companies are laundering the image of a regime that is actively attempting to erase an entire nation.
A recent investigative report has documented that at least 115 foreign-branded hotels are currently operating in East Turkistan, with another 74 under construction or in the planning phase. These properties are not isolated from the system of repression—they are embedded in it. Several hotels have been built on the sites of demolished mosques, cemeteries, and sacred cultural landmarks, desecrated by the Chinese State and Chinese Communist Party in its deliberate campaign to eradicate East Turkistan’s identity, history, and faith.
The crimes occurring in East Turkistan are staggering in scale and severity. Millions of Uyghur and other Turkic peoples have been interned in concentration camps and prisons. Hundreds of thousands of women have been forcibly sterilized. More than one million Uyghur children have been forcibly separated from their families and placed in state-run indoctrination camps. Between 25,000 and 50,000 Uyghurs are killed every year in China’s industrial-scale organ harvesting operations. The Chinese occupation regime has destroyed over 16,000 mosques and cultural sites, wiping millenia of East Turkistani heritage off the map.
“When international corporations operate in occupied territory, on stolen land, and over the graves of our history, they are not neutral observers—they are active collaborators,” said Dr. Mamtimin Ala, President of the East Turkistan Government in Exile. “These companies must understand: no amount of branding or legal maneuvering can shield them from moral responsibility. Their profits are soaked in the suffering of our people. And history will not forget their betrayal.”
These hotel developments are not symbols of progress—they are monuments to complicity. They signal to the world that genocide can be commercialized, that sacred sites can be replaced with hotels, and that the suffering of an entire nation can be buried under luxury branding.
The East Turkistan Government in Exile stresses that ending the genocide is not possible under Chinese colonial rule. There can be no justice, no dignity, and no lasting peace for our people while our homeland remains occupied.
“Restoring East Turkistan’s independence is the only way to end this genocide and ensure long-term peace, security, and dignity for our people,” said Salih Hudayar, the Minister of Foreign Affairs and Security. “We are not against business—we are against complicity. When East Turkistan is free and independent once again, we will welcome foreign investment that respects our sovereignty, honors our history, and helps rebuild what the Chinese state has tried to destroy. But until that day, any company operating in our homeland under China’s occupation is not just complicit—it is an accomplice to colonialism and genocide. And history will remember them not as investors, but as collaborators in a campaign to erase an entire nation.”
The East Turkistan Government in Exile calls for the immediate termination of all foreign corporate operations in East Turkistan. We urge governments, international institutions, and people of conscience everywhere to confront the normalization of genocide and stand against those who profit from atrocity.
This is not development. This is colonialism and desecration. And it must end.