PRESS RELEASE – For Immediate Release
East Turkistan Government in Exile (ETGE)
East-Turkistan.Net
contact@East-Turkistan.Net
19 June 2025

Washington, D.C. — The East Turkistan Government in Exile (ETGE) welcomes the G7 Leaders’ Statement on Transnational Repression (TNR) and urges immediate, coordinated action to counter the Chinese government’s sustained infiltration, manipulation, and repression of East Turkistani/Uyghur diaspora communities through covert operatives, proxy organizations, psychological operations, and lawfare campaigns.

For nearly three decades, the People’s Republic of China, through its Ministry of State Security (MSS), the Chinese Communist Party’s United Front Work Department (UFWD), and its extensive networks, has pursued a documented strategy to infiltrate and neutralize East Turkistani independence movements. These operations, often carried out through Uyghur and other Turkic operatives, involve inducement, defamation, coercion, threats, and lawfare designed to suppress pro-independence advocacy.

This strategy reflects the objectives outlined in CCP Central Document No. 7 (1996), which explicitly instructs Chinese government and party agencies to “divide the outside separatist forces; win over most of them; and alienate the remaining small number and fight against them.” These tactics are reinforced by diplomatic pressure campaigns, United Front influence operations, infiltration, co-optation, coercion, and other strategies aimed at preventing international support for East Turkistan’s national self-determination and independence.

The ETGE highlights the April 2025 arrest of Dilshat Reshit, a founding member and longtime spokesperson of the World Uyghur Congress (WUC), who was revealed to be working as a Chinese agent. His case confirms the ETGE’s long-standing warnings that Chinese intelligence agencies have embedded operatives within East Turkistani/Uyghur diaspora institutions to manipulate narratives, suppress dissent, and obstruct pro-independence advocacy.

In September 2018, Salih Hudayar, now serving as ETGE’s Minister for Foreign Affairs and Security, was wrongfully arrested while peacefully demonstrating outside the White House. He was calling for the U.S. government to recognize China’s atrocities in East Turkistan as genocide and to formally recognize East Turkistan as an occupied country. The arrest followed a false accusation made by an individual volunteering with the Uyghur Human Rights Project (UHRP), led at the time by World Uyghur Congress Chairman Omer Kanat. The charges, filed under a warrant alleging “threats,” “anti-Islamic hate crime,” and “terrorism,” were ultimately dropped in 2022, shortly before expert testimony could be submitted indicating the accuser’s behavioral profile matched that of a Chinese intelligence asset.

“The campaign to criminalize me and discredit East Turkistan’s National Movement was part of a broader effort by Chinese operatives and aligned individuals to silence pro-independence movements abroad,” said ETGE Foreign Minister Salih Hudayar. “It was not only lawfare; it was transnational repression, executed through diaspora institutions co-opted or compromised by Beijing.”

The ETGE is also gravely concerned by persistent efforts, led or encouraged by certain “leader” figures within Uyghur diaspora institutions, to pressure organizations to avoid endorsing initiatives recognizing East Turkistan as an occupied country. These actions, whether deliberate or not, have served to marginalize and silence the ETGE and other pro-independence advocates, in clear alignment with Beijing’s strategic objectives outlined in CCP documents.

“Democratic governments must ensure that their support for exile organizations does not inadvertently empower individuals or networks furthering foreign influence,” said ETGE Prime Minister Abdulahat Nur. “Several such figures hold current leadership roles despite past affiliations or family ties to CCP collaborators and entities such as the United Front and the XPCC, institutions directly implicated in repression and genocide. These connections must be scrutinized if we are to maintain the integrity of global advocacy efforts.”

The ETGE calls on democratic governments to:

• Conduct thorough investigations into foreign influence and infiltration within East Turkistani and Uyghur diaspora communities and organizations
• Use all legal avenues, including the ICC and World Court, to prevent and punish the crime of China’s ongoing genocide, and prosecute cases of transnational repression to the fullest extent of the law
• Expose and expel Chinese intelligence operatives embedded in civil society, academic, or advocacy platforms
• End engagement and funding for organizations or individuals found to have engaged in or facilitated transnational repression
• Establish legal and policy safeguards for vulnerable exile communities and pro-liberation movements facing political intimidation or lawfare
• Recognize East Turkistan as an occupied country and engage with its legitimate representatives

The ETGE reaffirms its commitment to peaceful advocacy and the restoration of East Turkistan’s independence through lawful means, and stands ready to work with allied nations to expose and dismantle the Chinese government’s transnational repression, influence operations, and intelligence networks targeting exiled East Turkistani and Uyghur communities.