Uyghurs urge global powers to halt genocide by China

Uyghurs residing in Turkey have taken a stand against China's human rights abuses in Xinjiang province

Ankara: Uyghurs residing in Turkey have taken a stand against China’s human rights abuses in Xinjiang province, with a new Amnesty International report corroborating these abuses as “crimes against humanity,” reported the Daily Asian Age.

The East Turkestan Government in Exile has issued an urgent plea to the 78th UN General Assembly and its member states, calling for immediate and decisive action to stop China’s ongoing genocide against Uyghurs, Kazakhs, Kyrgyz, and other Turkic peoples.

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Ghulam Yaghma, President of the East Turkestan Government-in-Exile (ETGE), emphasised, “China’s ongoing genocide in East Turkestan is arguably the most pressing humanitarian crisis of our time. The international community’s deafening silence and inaction betray not only the Uyghurs but also our shared human conscience,” according to the Daily Asian Age.

Since 2014, China’s ongoing genocide and crimes against humanity in East Turkestan have included the mass internment of over three million Uyghurs and other Turkic peoples in a network of concentration camps, prisons, and slave labour camps.

Yaghma’s statement also pointed out that China’s genocide extends to forced labour, sterilisations, cultural erasure, assimilation efforts, the separation of nearly one million Uyghur children from their families, state-sanctioned rape, and the suppression of religious freedom.

The United States and several Western nations, including Canada, the Netherlands, the UK, Lithuania, the Czech Republic, and France, have officially labelled China’s actions as ‘genocide.’ A 2022 UN report has further supported the characterization of these crimes as ‘crimes against humanity,’ as reported by the Daily Asian Age.

ETGE Strategic Advisor Mamtimin Ala stressed the need for democratic nations, led by the US, to prioritize the East Turkestan issue at the UN General Assembly and Security Council, saying, “A failure to act exposes a catastrophic shortfall in our global human rights framework and represents a significant moral failure.”

The recent events in East Turkestan and mainland China have shattered the myth of a unified, strong, homogeneous, and peaceful China. It has become evident that China’s heavy-handed repression of the Uighur and Turkic Muslim populations in East Turkestan, renamed “Xinjiang” by China, cannot be ignored any longer.

The Uyghur people, like the Tibetans and Mongols, have never truly experienced autonomy in their so-called Autonomous Region, as all key decision-making powers rest in the hands of Chinese officials.

Uyghur figures in the government serve as mere figureheads, with true authority held by Chinese officials, including the regional chairman, the Daily Asian Age reported.