PRESS RELEASE – For Immediate Release
East Turkistan Government in Exile (ETGE)
East-Turkistan.Net
contact@East-Turkistan.Net
5 July 2025
The East Turkistan Government in Exile (ETGE) solemnly commemorates the 16th anniversary of the July 5, 2009 Urumchi Massacre, honors the victims of that atrocity, and calls upon the international community to take immediate and decisive action to stop China’s ongoing genocide against Uyghurs, Kazakhs, Kyrgyz, and other Turkic peoples being perpetrated by the People’s Republic of China in Occupied East Turkistan.
On July 5, 2009, Chinese security forces carried out a violent massacre of peaceful Uyghur demonstrators in Urumchi, resulting in the deaths, disappearances, and unlawful detentions of thousands. The massacre was not an isolated human rights violation. It marked the beginning of a broader, state-orchestrated campaign of ethnic annihilation. It was the first visible act of what has become a systematic and internationally recognized genocide.
“The Urumchi Massacre was the turning point. It was the warning the world ignored,” said Dr. Mamtimin Ala, President of the East Turkistan Government in Exile. “Since that day, China has escalated its campaign of genocide and colonization against the Uyghurs and other Turkic peoples of East Turkistan. Millions are now in camps and prisons, enslaved in factories, and stripped of their identity, religion, and families.”
As of 2025, the People’s Republic of China continues to carry out the Uyghur genocide with impunity. Millions of Uyghurs, Kazakhs, Kyrgyz, and other Turkic peoples remain imprisoned in concentration camps and prisons. Millions more are subjected to slave labor, forced assimilation, sterilization, digital surveillance, and physical and psychological torture. The Chinese state has criminalized Uyghur and Turkic identity, religion, and culture and is intent on eliminating an entire nation.
In recent months, new intelligence and investigative reporting have confirmed that the Chinese government intends to triple the number of organ harvesting centers in East Turkistan by 2030. Current estimates indicate that between 25,000 to 50,000 Uyghurs and other Turkic youth are being killed annually for the forced extraction of their organs. These operations constitute state-sponsored, industrial-scale murder. They are not voluntary transplant centers. They are genocidal facilities disguised as healthcare infrastructure. The global community cannot treat this as a distant or abstract human rights concern. These are acts of genocide and crimes against humanity being carried out in the open by a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council.
Further escalating the crisis is the July 1, 2025 appointment of Chen Xiaojiang as the new Chinese Communist Party Secretary in Occupied East Turkistan. Chen, a former senior official in the United Front Work Department and the State Ethnic Affairs Commission, has been a chief enforcer of China’s national erasure and colonial domination policies. His installation represents a calculated expansion of ideological warfare, transnational repression, and genocide.
“Chen Xiaojiang is the CCP’s enforcer of erasure. His installation in East Turkistan represents a strategic escalation of genocide,” said Salih Hudayar, Minister of Foreign Affairs and Security of the ETGE. “The world must treat this as the emergency it is.”
The ETGE also expresses deep alarm and categorical condemnation over the recent meeting between U.S. Ambassador to China David Perdue and Wang Xiaohong, China’s Minister of Public Security, an individual directly implicated in genocide and crimes against humanity. This meeting, framed as a law enforcement exchange, is unacceptable under the Genocide Convention, to which the United States is a party. No government that claims to oppose genocide and crimes against humanity should be cooperating with a regime actively carrying out such atrocities. This meeting represents a collapse of moral clarity and legal consistency.
The ETGE formally calls upon the United States government, the European Union, NATO member states, and democratic allies worldwide to immediately sever all law enforcement, intelligence, and military ties with the People’s Republic of China. It also urges the suspension of trade and diplomatic engagements with Beijing’s genocidal actors, the imposition of targeted sanctions on Chinese officials and institutions involved in genocide and slave labor, and full support for East Turkistan’s efforts to obtain accountability and justice, including through its legal complaint at the International Criminal Court. The international community must also recognize and support the East Turkistani people’s right to national self-determination and independence.
The ETGE reiterates that the only viable long-term solution to ending the genocide and ensuring the survival of the Uyghur and other Turkic peoples is the full and lawful restoration of East Turkistan’s independence. The East Turkistan issue is not a matter of China’s internal affairs. It is a matter of foreign occupation, colonization, and grave violations of international law. The Captive Nations Law of the United States (Public Law 86-90) explicitly identifies East Turkistan as an occupied nation and affirms the responsibility of the United States to support the recovery of its liberty and independence.
The ETGE reminds all governments that the price of inaction is death. The cost of appeasement is complicity. The time for symbolic statements has passed. A genocide is underway. The perpetrators are known. The mechanisms for justice exist. All that is lacking is the political will to act. The world must uphold its legal and moral obligations to end China’s prolonged campaign of colonization, genocide, and occupation of East Turkistan.