The East Turkistan Government-in-Exile is fully committed to the preservation and advancement of Women’s Rights, both in East Turkistan and throughout our diaspora community. We are especially focused on documenting and opposing China’s violations of women’s rights in East Turkistan in order to bring an end to the systematic rape and trauma perpetrated by China and its Occupation forces.
Declaration on the Elimination of Violence Against Women
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Article I: For the purposes of this Declaration, the term “violence against women” means any act of gender-based violence that results in, or is likely to result in, physical, sexual or psychological harm or suffering to women, including threats of such acts, coercion or arbitrary deprivation of liberty, whether occurring in public or in private life.
Article II: Violence against women shall be understood to encompass, but not be limited to, the following:
- Physical, sexual and psychological violence occurring in the family, including battering, sexual abuse of female children in the household, dowry-related violence, marital rape, female genital mutilation and other traditional practices harmful to women, non-spousal violence and violence related to exploitation;
- Physical, sexual and psychological violence occurring within the general community, including rape, sexual abuse, sexual harassment and intimidation at work, in educational institutions and elsewhere, trafficking in women and forced prostitution;
- Physical, sexual and psychological violence perpetrated or condoned by the State, wherever it occurs
Throughout East Turkistan’s history, women have played a crucial role in shaping society, culture, music, and even politics. In 1918, International Women’s Day was celebrated for the first time in East Turkistan, leading to more freedom and equality for women across the region. During the second East Turkistan Republic, numerous women held various important roles in the government and the East Turkistan National Army. With the Chinese invasion and occupation of East Turkistan, women in society become more marginalized and China began to target Turkic women, without whom there would be no East Turkistani nation, in a bid to eradicate the future of East Turkistani national identity. Through its policies of forced relocations, forced abortions, state sponsored rape through forced marriages, and forced sterilization of women, China has not only caused physical injury to East Turkistani women, but also deep traumatic psychological damage that has impacted the whole of our nation.
- Since the invasion and occupation of East Turkistan, the Chinese Communist Party has been subjecting East Turkistani women to forced abortions in a bid to control and prevent the growth of the Turkic population in the region. Between 1969-2009 some 3.7 million forced abortions were carried out in East Turkistan.
- In 2006, the Chinese government launched its 11th Five Year plan, which set a policy goal to transfer 400,000 Uyghur women to Chinese provinces in eastern China. That year some 240,000 Uyghur women from East Turkistan’s Kashgar state were forcibly transferred to eastern China.
- East Turkistani women are among the most repressed, if not the most repressed women across the world. Hundreds of thousands – if not millions – of them are locked up in concentration camps, prisons, and labor camps, where they are subjected to political and cultural indoctrination, forced starvation, forced medication, rape, torture, organ harvesting, sterilization, and even summary execution.
- Due to the fact that majority of the East Turkistani men are either in concentration camps, prisons, and labor camps, many East Turkistani women have been left to tend the fields, engage in hard labor, and have thus became vulnerable to all types of violence. Over 1.12 million Chinese officials (usually males) have been sent to live in the homes of Uyghurs & other Turkic peoples. Often times, the head-of-household has been detained or executed. Reports have come out of the region that Turkic women are being subject to sexual humiliation, assaults, and even rape within their very own homes.
- China’s government has been putting out advertisements and even sending “recruiters” to find Chinese males from China Proper to migrate to and settle in East Turkistan, plying them with promises of “beautiful Turkic women waiting for a Chinese husband” as part of comprehensive incentivize packages to attract colonists.
- Tens of thousands of Uyghur and other Turkic women have been forcibly married to Chinese men. This is, in essence, a form of state sponsored rape. Women who refuse to marry Chinese men are being sent to concentration camps, labor camps, and prisons.
- Many East Turkistani women have not only been torn apart from their husbands, but also from their children, as part of China’s policy of forced family separation in East Turkistan.