PRESS RELEASE – For Immediate Release
East Turkistan Government in Exile (ETGE)
East-Turkistan.Net
contact@East-Turkistan.Net
9 April 2025
ETGE urges democratic states to confront China’s illegal operations abroad aimed at eradicating East Turkistani advocacy and resistance.
WASHINGTON, DC — The East Turkistan Government in Exile (ETGE) urgently calls on democratic governments to investigate and prosecute the People’s Republic of China’s expanding campaign of transnational repression, which targets East Turkistani/Uyghur communities and organizations in exile through espionage, infiltration, coercion, and political warfare.
The recent arrest in Sweden of a man accused of spying on Uyghurs for Chinese intelligence services is part of a broader, systemic policy. This campaign of repression is rooted in the CCP’s Politburo Document No. 7 (1996), which instructs authorities to prevent the “East Turkistan problem from becoming international,” and to “win over most [diaspora organizations, communities, and leaders], divide them, alienate a small number, and fight against them.” The directive further emphasizes the use of “home bases in regions with high overseas Chinese populations” and the cultivation of “broad and deep friendships” to suppress “separatist” activities to the “utmost degree.”
The document also explicitly calls on China to pressure countries such as Turkey, Kazakhstan, and Kyrgyzstan to weaken East Turkistani activism through diplomatic and coercive means. What we see today is not incidental—it is the result of a long-standing foreign policy aimed at silencing the East Turkistani cause globally.
China’s Ministry of State Security (MSS) and United Front Work Department (UFWD) are leading this campaign. These agencies operate through a growing network of co-opted individuals embedded in diaspora communities and organizations, often posing as entrepreneurs, students, scholars, religious figures, or even “human rights activists,” while acting as informants or influence agents for the CCP.
In recent years, amidst China’s ongoing campaign of genocide, forced assimilation, and mass enslavement of Uyghurs and other Turkic peoples, an alarming number of Uyghurs across the diaspora have been invited—or coerced—to return to East Turkistan under the pretext of visiting family. Many who return do so under pressure or threat, and are subsequently deployed as tools of repression, returning to host countries as informants, infiltrators, or provocateurs tasked with undermining the East Turkistani cause.
Transnational repression includes surveillance, harassment, disinformation, lawfare, and threats targeting East Turkistani advocates and their families in East Turkistan. In 1996, then-chairman of the so-called “Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region,” Abdulahat (Ablet) Abdurishit, summed up the Chinese regime’s approach in chilling terms: “All methods are acceptable to fight separatism — penetration, propaganda, killing.” This policy remains active and is being implemented globally.
Salih Hudayar, ETGE Minister of Foreign Affairs and Security, stated: “China’s war against our people is not confined to our occupied homeland—it is being waged globally. Its objective is not merely to spy; it is to eradicate the East Turkistani independence struggle. Democracies must wake up to this reality, prosecute China’s agents and assets, and stand in defense of liberty and truth.”
Transnational repression is a national security threat to every country that hosts East Turkistani and Uyghur communities. It is not merely a human rights issue—it is a direct assault on democracy, sovereignty, and international law. The East Turkistan Government in Exile stands ready to assist democratic nations in exposing and dismantling these operations and in defending the East Turkistani people’s right to freedom, dignity, and national self-determination.