PRESS RELEASE – For Immediate Release
East Turkistan Government in Exile
contact@East-Turkistan.Net
+1 (202) 599-2244, Ext: 1
20 May 2021 5:00 PM EST
WASHINGTON: May 21, 2021 – On May 20th, 2021 the Parliament of Lithuania passed a resolution designating China’s atrocities against Uyghurs and other Turkic peoples in Occupied East Turkistan as genocide.
Lithuania is the third country in Europe after the Netherlands and the United Kingdom whose Parliament has officially declared the horrors China is inflicting on the Uyghurs a “genocide.” Outside Europe, similar declarations came from the United States and Canada.
“We thank Lithuania’s Parliament for recognizing China’s atrocities against Uyghurs and other Turkic peoples in Occupied East Turkistan as genocide,” said Prime Minister Salih Hudayar of the East Turkistan Government in Exile. “We urge all nations in the Free World including all member states of the EU Council to follow suit.”
The May 20 vote by the Lithuanian Parliament is important because Lithuania is the first country that is part of the Belt and Road Initiative to take such a brave stand on the Uyghur genocide, showing other countries that Belt and Road memorandums cannot tie the hands of democratic countries when human rights are at stake.
In fact, the resolution, passed in the Seimas, the Lithuanian Parliament, with a vote of 86 to one and seven abstentions, goes beyond East Turkistan and indicts China and its CCP for its massive violations of human rights and religious liberty.
Lithuania, the document says, “strongly condemns China’s massive, systematic and grave human rights violations and crimes against humanity.” It asks “the United Nations to initiate a legal inquiry into the Uyghur genocide in Xinjiang detention camps,” and calls on the European Parliament and the European Commission “to review the EU’s cooperation policy with China and formulate a clear position on China’s massive, systematic, and serious human rights violations, crimes against humanity, and the Uyghur genocide.”
Note: The term “Xinjiang” meaning “the Colony or the New Territory” is used by the Chinese government to refer to East Turkistan.
China, the document says, should “immediately end the illegal practice of organ harvesting from prisoners of conscience, release all prisoners of conscience in China, including members of the Falun Gong spiritual movement, end the Uyghur genocide and close re-education camps, and release all detainees and prisoners in detention and forced labor camps,” reports BitterWinter, an online magazine.
The East Turkistan Government in Exile urges the international community to support our ongoing case against China at the International Criminal Court and pressure the International Olympics Committee to relocate the upcoming Winter 2022 Olympics from China to another country not engaged in genocide.
