Uyghur: East Turkistan leaders host press conference to highlight Chinese genocide issue

During the press conference, Zumret Dawut, a mother of three, said she was detained at an internment camp for two months in 2018.

She was forced to recite Chinese propaganda, beaten for providing food to an ailing fellow prisoner injected with unknown drugs almost daily, and then forcefully sterilized. 

Lying in a dark prison cell, with shackles on her wrists and ankles and four cameras watching her every move, Dawut said she was caged alongside hundreds of thousands of others in China’s horrific re-education camps.

Hudayar spoke about the importance of The Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China’s (IPAC) letter urging the International Criminal Court to accept the July 2020 complaint by the East Turkistan Government in Exile and the East Turkistan National Awakening Movement. 

The complaint, backed by more than 60 parliamentarians from 16 countries, says the Chinese Government may be committing Genocide and other crimes against humanity against the Uyghur and other Turkic peoples in East Turkistan.

“We thank IPAC for signing the letter urging the ICC to accept our complaint against China,” said Hudayar.  “We urge all governments, especially member states of the ICC, to support our case against China and also to recognize China’s atrocities against Uyghur, Kazakh, Kyrgyz, Uzbek, and other Turkic peoples in Occupied East Turkistan as a genocide.”

Hudayar also spoke about The Canadian Parliament’s Subcommittee on International Human Rights and International Development, which in October designated the Chinese Government’s atrocities against Uyghur and other Turkic peoples in East Turkistan as “genocide” as defined under the U.N. Genocide Convention.

“We thank the Canadian Parliament and urge the Canadian Government to follow through with the subcommittee’s recommendations,” Hudayar said.

A week later, U.S. Senators John Cornyn, Robert Menendez, James Risch, Marco Rubio. Ben Cardin and Jeff Merkley introduced a resolution in the U.S. Senate to recognize China’s Genocide against Uyghurs and other Turkic peoples.

“We express our thanks to the U.S. Senate and urge the U.S. House to introduce a similar resolution,” Hudayar said.

More recently, the U.S. Government has removed from its terrorist watch list the so-called “East Turkistan Islamic Movement,” which was a non-existent group that China had fabricated following September 11 to label East Turkistan and its people as “terrorists.”

“We thank the U.S. Government, especially Secretary Pompeo, for highlighting the plight of East Turkistan and its people,” Hudayar said.

"Aside from locking up millions of people in concentration camps, prisons and using them as slave labor or killing them for their organs, we suspect China might be engaging in or planning to engage in biological warfare against Uyghurs and other Turkic peoples."

In 2017, the PLA’s Biowarfare Strategy textbook hinted at using “ethnic-specific genetic attacks” against China’s enemies. In 2018, Chinese state media Xinhua reported that between 2016-2017 some 36 million people between the ages of 12 and 65 had their DNA, voiceprints, and retina scans collected across East Turkistan.

"We believe that China is downplaying the actual population of East Turkistan and its people. In 1947, the Government of East Turkistan Republic had submitted documents to the U.S. State Department, which estimated the population of East Turkistan’s Turkic people at being 7 million at the time."

Today, China claims Uyghurs and other Turkic people are only 13.5 million, with some 12 million Uyghurs.

Based on historical data and population growth rate calculations, we estimate the population of Uyghur and other Turkic peoples in East Turkistan number from 35 to 40 million, he said.

“We call on governments and organizations to do further research to figure the actual population of East Turkistan and its people,” Hudayar said.

“We also thank the western various countries and parliaments across the world for speaking up on our issue. We condemn the Muslim world’s silence, especially Muslim leaders like Pakistan’s Imran Khan and Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The Muslim world needs to break their silence and come to the aid of the most oppressed Muslims in the world, the Muslims of East Turkistan,” Hudayar said.

On November 12, Uyghurs and other East Turkistanis across the globe will be commemorating East Turkistan’s independence day.

Twice in the 20th century, the people of East Turkistan rose against the Chinese occupation of our country and declared independence as the East Turkistan Republic, the first time in 1933 and once more in 1944, he said.

The East Turkistan Government in Exile will be holding a rally in front of the U.S. Capitol on Thursday, November 12, from 11 AM-1 PM to call on the U.S. Congress and Government to recognize the Genocide and to recognize East Turkistan as an Occupied Country.

In light of this, China and its agents have been seeking to undermine the efforts of the East Turkistan Government in Exile, which has never stopped since the establishment of the Government in Exile back in September of 2004.