Resisting Chinese colonialism: East Turkistan's struggle to restore its independence

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5 days ago

China's occupation of East Turkistan has been ongoing for seventy-five years, but the resistance of the East Turkistani people—deeply rooted in centuries of anti-colonial struggle—remains undeterred read more
The People's Republic of China (PRC) has used disinformation, coercion, and brutal force to maintain its colonial occupation over East Turkistan. While Beijing falsely claims to combat terrorism, it has in fact waged a campaign of state terror and genocide, aiming to erase the East Turkistani nation.
Since the late 1990s, the Chinese government has deliberately conflated East Turkistan's legitimate independence movement with extremism and terrorism. The so-called 'East Turkistan Islamic Movement' (ETIM), widely cited by China, doesn't exist—it is a fabricated label used to demonize and discredit the East Turkistan independence movement. Proxy groups like the 'Turkistan Islamic Party' (TIP), whose actions and rhetoric are unrelated to East Turkistan's independence struggle, have been instrumental in this disinformation strategy.
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East Turkistan is not a 'restive region' or an 'ethnic minority area' of China; it is an occupied country. The Uyghurs, Kazakhs, Kyrgyz, and other native Turkic peoples have never accepted Chinese rule and have continually resisted it.
In 1759 the Manchu-led Qing Empire occupied East Turkistan and transformed it into a military colony. The people of East Turkistan responded with over 42 uprisings. In 1864, they restored East Turkistan's independence and established the State of Yette Sheher, which endured until another Manchu invasion in 1876. After subjugating the independent Turkic state, the Qing annexed East Turkistan in 1884 and renamed it ' Xinjiang,' meaning 'new territory'—a colonial designation.
In the early 20th century, anti-colonial resistance in East Turkistan intensified, leading to the emergence of the modern East Turkistan independence movement. This movement declared the First East Turkistan Republic in 1933, and the Second East Turkistan Republic in 1944. However, in the late summer of 1949, over 30 senior political and military leaders of the East Turkistan Republic were assassinated by the Soviet Union. This political decapitation critically weakened East Turkistan's leadership at a critical moment. On October 12, 1949, the People's Republic of China (PRC) invaded East Turkistan, and by December 22, 1949, with Soviet support, overthrew the independent East Turkistan Republic.
Beijing calls this a 'peaceful liberation,' when in fact it was a military occupation met with armed resistance. From 1949 to 1954, more than 150,000 East Turkistanis were killed resisting the Chinese communist occupation. In 1955, East Turkistan was designated as the 'Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR)'—a deceptive term meant to obscure Chinese colonial rule. For decades, China has carried out forced assimilation, executions, mass incarcerations, religious repression, cultural destruction, and demographic engineering via Chinese colonial settlement.
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From the 1950s through the 1990s, East Turkistan witnessed continued uprisings and mass mobilizations. These were met with violent crackdowns and executions. Despite repression, the desire for independence persisted.
In March 1996, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)'s Politburo Standing Committee issued Document No. 7, a top-secret directive on crush East Turkistan's independence movement. It detailed instructions to infiltrate exile organizations, co-opt foreign governments, and shape international perception through propaganda. That same year, 'XUAR' Chairman Abdulahat Abdurishit made Beijing's position clear: 'All methods are acceptable to fight separatism—penetration, propaganda, killing.'
The CCP didn't wait for a credible threat, it launched the ' Strike Hard Campaign' in April 1996. While tens of thousands of Uyghurs were arrested and imprisoned, Hasan Mahsum—long suspected by Uyghurs of being a CCP asset—was briefly detained and then released. He then traveled from Urumchi to Beijing, and later founded the so-called 'East Turkistan Islamic Party' (ETIP) in China's all-weather ally Pakistan in September 1997.
ETIP's rhetoric emphasized jihad against 'global infidels' and demonized the national independence struggle as 'un-Islamic.' This undermined the East Turkistan independence movement—then led by the Kazakhstan-based United Revolutionary Front of East Turkistan—and created a proxy actor for Beijing to portray East Turkistani resistance as global jihadist terrorism.
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In 1999, as the Shanghai Five Summit convened, East Turkistani leaders in Kazakhstan unequivocally declared: 'The struggle of the Uyghurs in Eastern Turkistan has nothing to do with Islamic fundamentalism or extremism, that struggle can be defined as one for national liberation.'
By 2001, China was preparing to launch the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO ) . That same year, the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan and ETIP were folded into the so-called Turkistan Islamic Party (TIP), which emerged with slogans to target 'all global infidels' and establish an 'Islamic caliphate.' TIP's alliance with, and presence alongside, terrorist groups in Afghanistan and later Syria allowed Beijing to promote a manufactured terrorist threat to justify its ongoing campaign of genocide.
To solidify this narrative, the CCP invented the term 'East Turkistan Islamic Movement' (ETIM) just months after 9/11. No Uyghur group used this name. It was created to conflate the broader East Turkistan independence movement with Islamic terrorism. While the U.S. initially designated ETIM to appease Beijing, the designation was lifted in 2020 after a review found no credible evidence such a group existed. The State Department clarified that TIP is a distinct entity and that Beijing's conflation of the two was factually inaccurate.
In exile, the legitimate independence movement continued. In 2004, the East Turkistan Government-in-Exile (ETGE) was established in Washington, D.C., to counter Chinese repression and disinformation. Since its founding, the ETGE has spearheaded East Turkistan's independence movement, calling for international recognition of East Turkistan as an occupied country and support for its right to external self-determination and independence.
Despite continued efforts by China to brand all East Turkistani activism as terrorism, the global community is beginning to acknowledge the reality. The ongoing genocide against Uyghurs and other Turkic peoples—recognized by the United States, several parliaments, and legal experts worldwide—is not a byproduct of state security policy. It is a deliberate campaign of ethnic and cultural eradication.
Since 2014, China's so-called 'People's War' has led to the internment of millions of Uyghurs, Kazakhs, and Kyrgyz in concentration camps and prisons. Hundreds of thousands of East Turkistani women have been subjected to forced sterilizations and abortions. Over 20 million Uyghur children have been separated from families and placed in state-run boarding schools. East Turkistan has become a massive slave labour zone, producing goods from cotton to solar panels. Evidence presented to the U.S. Congress highlights that 25,000 to 50,000 Uyghurs are killed annually for organ harvesting.
China's global influence—fuelled by the Belt and Road Initiative and strategic investments—has helped shield it from meaningful accountability. Many governments avoid criticizing Beijing due to economic dependence, while others actively cooperate with China to surveil and suppress East Turkistani diaspora activism.
From the uprisings against the Manchu Empire to the founding of the East Turkistan Republics in 1933 and 1944, and to the modern-day political resistance of the East Turkistan Government-in-Exile, the people of East Turkistan have never surrendered their demand for the recovery of their independence. This is not a movement of extremism, religious fanaticism, or terrorism. It is a lawful and just struggle for national liberation and decolonisation, fully grounded in international law.
The international community must recognize that East Turkistan's struggle is not an internal matter of China, but a fundamental issue of illegal occupation, genocide, and the right to national self-determination. Just as the world has supported the sovereignty of Ukraine and the decolonisation of former colonies, it must stand with the people of East Turkistan in their pursuit of freedom and independence.
Restoring East Turkistan's independence is not just a matter of justice—it is essential for the survival and dignity of the Uyghurs and all Turkic peoples. The global community must affirm East Turkistan's right to external self-determination under international law.
The author is the Minister of Foreign Affairs and Security for the East Turkistan Government-in-Exile and the leader of the East Turkistan National Movement. His X handle is @SalihHudayar. The views expressed in this article are his own and do not necessarily reflect the views of Firstpost.