ETGE urges Trump to raise human rights abuses in East Turkistan, Tibet during Xi summit

Washington: The East Turkistan Government-in-Exile (ETGE) and the East Turkistan National Movement (ETNM) have called on the United States President Donald Trump to directly raise China’s “ongoing genocide” and “colonial occupation” of East Turkistan and Tibet during his meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing.

President Trump began his state visit to China on Wednesday for a high-stakes two-day summit, marking the first visit by a sitting US President to the country in nearly a decade.

In its appeal to Trump, the ETGE alleged that Jinping ordered the genocide targeting Uyghurs, Kazakhs, Kyrgyz, and other Turkic peoples in occupied “East Turkistan”, also known as the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region of China, which the exile authorities said has now entered its thirteenth year.

The exiled authorities further urged the US President to reject any agreement enabling the “genocide and enslavement” of East Turkistanis and Tibetans during the summit.

“East Turkistan holds China’s largest reserves of beryllium and major deposits of lithium, zirconium, rubidium, titanium, magnesium, and rare earth elements, the very critical minerals under negotiation at this summit, all extracted from occupied territory under conditions the United Nations has assessed may constitute enslavement as a form of crimes against humanity,” they stated.

According to the ETGE, Jinping’s genocidal campaign has led to “mass internment; mass enslavement through forced labour exceeding the Communist regime’s projection of 13.75 million transfers; forced sterilisation; the separation of over one million Uyghur and other Turkic children from their families; and organ harvesting from hundreds of thousands of East Turkistanis”. It claimed that Beijing’s 2026 “Ethnic Unity Law” codified the erasure of non-Chinese identities.

“There is only one solution to guarantee our people’s human rights and survival: decolonisation and the restoration of East Turkistan’s national independence. On May 5, we submitted East Turkistan’s first-ever formal petition to the UN Decolonisation Committee, and we call on the international community, including the United States, to support our struggle to restore our independence,” said Mamtimin Ala, President of the ETGE.

The exiled authorities described China’s “occupation” of East Turkistan as a direct threat to American national security.

They alleged that Beijing conducted all of its nuclear tests on East Turkistani soil, including one in 2020, and was expanding its construction of hundreds of Intercontinental Ballistic Missile (ICBM) silos in the “occupied territory” aimed at the United States.

They further claimed that China had established critical AI and data centre infrastructure in the region.

“The critical minerals at this summit are extracted from occupied East Turkistan under conditions of genocide and enslavement. A restored free and independent East Turkistan would supply America these minerals at competitive rates, strengthening American industry and breaking Beijing’s chokehold,” said Salih Hudayar, Foreign Minister of the ETGE and President of the ETNM.

IANS