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The East Turkistan Government-in-Exile is committed to upholding the rights and freedoms guaranteed under the the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in order to promote and ensure peace within East Turkistan and across the world. We are firmly committed to upholding the UN Genocide Convention and urge all members of the United Nations to do so as well. Ultimately, our goal is to end China’s brutal ongoing campaign of genocide, colonization, and occupation in East Turkistan, with the support of the wider Free World.

Uyghur detainees at a concentration camp in Khotan, East Turkistan, 2017

Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide

Article II


  1. Killing members of the group;
  4. Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
  5. Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

Since China’s invasion and occupation of East Turkistan in 1949, the Chinese Communist Party has waged a brutal campaign of colonization and genocide which has led to the deaths of millions of innocent East Turkistanis, destruction of East Turkistan’s environment, and the gradual eradication of the language, culture, and history of its Indo-European and Turkic identity. China’s colonial policy of genocide have effectively altered the demographics of East Turkistan, bringing the Uyghurs and other Turkic peoples near the margin of becoming a minority in their own Homeland. If current trends continue, East Turkistanis risk being wiped out as a distinct people. Today, millions of East Turkistanis are being put into concentration camps, prisons, and labor camps, children are being forcibly separated from their families and raised in state run orphanages and boarding schools, and thousands of Uyghur and other Turkic women are being forcibly married to Chinese men.

  • At the time of Chinese occupation in 1949, over 90% of the population of East Turkistan were ethnically Turkic people. Of this number, Uyghurs made up the majority. Ethnically Han Chinese persons constituted less than 4% of the total population of East Turkistan. Today, after nearly 70 years of genocide and colonization, the Turkic peoples of East Turkistan amount for some 55% of the total population of East Turkistan, with the Chinese population being around 45%.
  • It is clear that the intent of China’s Communist Party is to irreparably alter the demographic composition of the region, though restrictive birth policies, colonization, mass internment, forced migration, medical neglect (thereby increasing the natural rate of death), and through other modalities. This is no less than genocidal intent.
  • The Chinese Communist authorities established the Bingtuan (Paramilitary Production and Construction Corps) force in 1954 with 300,000 Chinese soldiers and their families to colonize East Turkistan, utilizing the forced labor of East Turkistani people. As of 2019, the Bingtuan is estimated to be around 3 million strong force.
  • In 1964, the People’s Republic of China conducted its first nuclear test in Lop Nur Lake, East Turkistan, this would be the first of 46 nuclear tests (the last test was conducted in 1996, though it is rumored that China still continues to test underground). The 46 nuclear tests led to the deaths of some 800,000 East Turkistanis and have left millions more exposed to cancerous radiation. East Turkistan has been extensively used as a weapons test base by China’s armed forces. Unbiased, internationally led epidemiological studies on the prevalence of radiation-related illnesses in East Turkistan are badly needed, but China’s restrictive security policies make this impossible.
  • During China’s Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) hundreds of thousands of East Turkistanis were starved to death. Tens of thousands of people were executed, accused of being “counter-revolutionaries”, “capitalists”, “ethnic nationalists,” and even “foreign devils.”
  • In a bid to prevent the future of Turkic existence in East Turkistan, the Chinese government implemented a population control policy in which millions of Uyghur and Turkic babies were forcibly aborted. During a 30-year period (1969-2009), China prevented the births of some 3.7 million people in East Turkistan. Forced abortion policies still continue today across East Turkistan.
  • Following the fall of the Soviet Union and the restoration of Western Turkistan’s independence (now Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, and Tajikistan), fearing East Turkistani attempts to regain their independence, the Chinese government launched the “First Strike Hard Campaign” (1996-2014), to crackdown on the “three evils” of “separatism, terrorism, and extremism” (all euphemisms for East Turkistani nationalism) in order to effectively eradicate the national identity of East Turkistanis. Some 200,000 East Turkistanis were imprisoned during this period.
  • Following the September 11th, 2001 terrorist attacks against the United States and greater Free World, the Chinese government began to target the people East Turkistan, especially the Uyghurs, using the pre-text of “counter-terrorism.”
  • Since 2014, China has embarked on a “Re-Education and Securitization Campaign” which has led to mass incarcerations, bans on religious and cultural practices, and the creation of an Orwellian police state in East Turkistan. In 2018, the Chinese government reported that some 1.12 million Chinese officials were sent live in the homes of East Turkistanis as “relatives” and to ensure their loyalty to the Chinese Communist Party and the State. Furthermore, some 36 million people’s DNA, voice prints, and retina scans were forcibly collected by the Chinese government across East Turkistan between 2016-2017.
  • In 2017, the China’s People’s Liberation Army’s Biowarfare Strategy hints the possible use of “ethnic genetic attacks” against China’s enemies, prompting many to fear that China may be preparing to wage biological warfare against the people of East Turkistan.
  • In May 2019, the US Department of Defense’s Assistant Secretary of Defense for Indo-Pacific Affairs, Randall G. Schriver, stated that China was holding some 3 million or more Turkic peoples in Concentration Camps. Detainees in the camps are subject to political and cultural indoctrination, forced starvation, forced medication, organ harvesting, rape, torture, and even summary execution.
  • In July 2019, the Washington Free Beacon broke the news that a vast network of Concentration Camps, prisons, and labor camps were uncovered in East Turkistan. The East Turkistan National Awakening Movement uncovered at least 124 concentration camps, 193 prisons, and 66 Bingtuan labor camps with an estimated total 3.68 million detainees. Other Researchers estimate there are up to 1,200 Concentration Camps, Prisons, and Labor camps across East Turkistan with possibly millions more held than currently estimated.
  • Some 500,000 Uyghur and other Turkic children have been forcibly separated from their families and sent to state-run orphanages and boarding schools where they are indoctrinated to denounce their own ethnicity and embrace Chinese culture and identity as their own.