The representatives of the East Turkistan Government in Exile (ETGE) and the Swedish Uyghur Committee (SUC) on July 6, 2024, organised protests in Amsterdam, Netherlands, Stockholm and Sweden highlighting the increasing number of atrocities being perpetrated by the CCP authorities onto their Uyghur Community.
The protests by these Uyghur rights organisations were organised on the sidelines of the commemoration of Uyghur massacre. During the protests in Amsterdam’s Dam Square, the Foreign Minister of ETGE, Salih Hudayar urged the Dutch government to put pressure on the Chinese government to immediately stop the ongoing genocide upon the Uyghur community.
“We urge the government to act against China’s ongoing campaign of colonisation, genocide and occupation. We want them to support the people of East Turkestan to get their rights to independence and right to human dignity The restoration of East Turkestan’s independence is the only way to ensure that their human rights, their resistance and their human dignity are guaranteed,” Hudayar said.
The minister further noted that China has refused to implement and respect the fundamental rights of the East Turkestani people. “Unfortunately, despite a lot of countries criticizing China and even the United Nations stating that China has been committing crimes against humanity and has refused to implement and respect the fundamentals of the East Turkestan people,” he said.
The minister added that the only way to ensure our human dignity is by restoring independence. “By doing so, they have once again showed that they intend to continue pursuing objectives to completely eradicate the people of East Turkestan. Hence the only way to ensure their human dignity is by restoring their independence, he added.
In another protest led by the Swedish Uyghur Committee outside the Swedish Parliament, a protestor recalling the China’s genocidal acts during the Urumqi Massacre of 2009, said, “On that unfortunate day, hundreds if not thousands of Uyghurs were massacred and tens of thousands were arrested across East Turkestan. Since then, the Chinese occupational forces have implemented an even more oppressive surveillance driven police state laying a groundwork of ongoing genocide.
The protestor furthered referred to Chinese so-called operation of Peoples War in the East Turkestan initiated in 2014 which has marked an even more systematic pattern of genocide.
The protestor lamented that the Uyghurs and other similar communities of the larger Turkestan homeland such as Kazakhs, Kyrgyz, Tajik in Xinjiang have been subjected to mass interment in concentration camps and prisons where they endure forced mitigation, indoctrination, torture, rape, organ harvesting and executions. “Many are enslaved in factories and forced labour camps under abhorrent conditions and the scope of the genocide is staggering.
During the 2016-17, the Chinese regime forcibly collected DNA voice prints and retina scans from over 36 million individuals aged between 12 to 65. They have been forcibly sterilised and over a million Uyghur children have been separated from their families and have been placed in state run facilities to be raised as loyal Chinese citizens. The protestors continued that over 60,000 mosques and other cultural sights have been destroyed in an attempt to erase native Uyghur culture.
