Monday, January 27, 2019 – Edmonton
The following statement was made by President Ghulam Osman Yaghma of the East Turkistan Government in Exile on commemorate International Holocaust Remembrance Day:
On the International Holocaust Remembrance Day, we, the people of East Turkistan, remember the millions of innocent lives that were lost as a result of the atrocities committed by the Nazi regime. We also reaffirm our steadfast commitment to confronting the evils of anti-Semitism, genocide, and other crimes against humanity wherever and whenever it arises.
This year marks the 75th Anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. Millions of innocent Jews, and other peoples were interned in concentration camps and brutally slaughtered by the evil Nazi regime in what history will always remember as the Holocaust.
Following the end of World War II, the international community solemnly vowed “NEVER AGAIN” allow such atrocities to take place in any part of the world, and with the United Nations clearly defined the term “genocide” and ratified the UN Genocide Convention. However over 70 years later, the world is silently witnessing another Holocaust like genocide in East Turkistan.
At the time of this statement, over 3 million Uyghur, Kazakh, Kyrgyz, and other Turkic peoples of East Turkistan are being held in concentration camps similar to those that held millions of Jews and other peoples over seven decades ago. In these camps the Turkic peoples of East Turkistan are being subject to forced indoctrination, forced medication, torture, mass rape, sterilization, organ harvesting, forced labor and other crimes that are clearly defined as genocide under the UN Genocide Convention.
China, just like the Nazis seven decades earlier, continues to deny it is perpetrating a genocide against East Turkistan’s people, however, accounts from victims, eye witnesses, internal Chinese government documents, satellite imagery, and other data clearly show the reality of China’s brutal and systematic genocide being conducted against Uyghur and other Turkic peoples in Occupied East Turkistan. The world continues to remain silent, especially the Turkic and Muslim majority nations share an ethnic and cultural bond to the mostly Turkic Muslim population of East Turkistan.
The Holocaust did not happen overnight, the international community has a moral obligation towards humanity to stop China’s brutal genocide of Uyghurs and other Turkic peoples in East Turkistan. Thus, as the President of East Turkistan Government-in-Exile, on behalf of East Turkistan and its people, we again call on the international community including world governments to acknowledge and recognize China’s brutal Holocaust like oppression of East Turkistan’s people as a genocide.
