They consider East Turkistan an occupied country. From exile, their goal is to build international support for ending what they call China’s “colonization, genocide, and occupation.” @inkstickmedia@MarielFerragamo
https://t.co/pZ2f3sHVDl
This article, written by Zhu Hongjiao, Associate Professor at “Xinjiang” Arts Institute and published in Guangming Daily on 9 August 2026, sheds light on the current situation of #Uyghurs in #EastTurkistan through the perspective of #Chinese artists and art critics, not just politicians.
The core message of the article is to discuss “Xinjiang”-themed paintings and their development since 1949.
His core message is that contemporary artists should move beyond superficial, cliché-driven, and outdated “ethnic-style” imagery to depict real life, real people, and modern “Xinjiang” with depth, authenticity, and emotional truth.
While this sounds reasonable, it is, at its core, an intentional attempt to reframe Uyghur reality through art to serve a political agenda — this is precisely the ideological direction of the article.
It calls for “Xinjiang” art to move away from Uyghur centrality toward #Chinese national collectivism.
The piece mostly promotes Han Chinese artists, only to mention the famous Uyghur painter Ghazi Ahmed in passing, to portray “Xinjiang”’s reality through art in the eyes of the colonialists, implying that Uyghurs are now an absolute minority with little to no cultural significance to represent artistically.
It sends a chilling message that Uyghurs should no longer be the subject of artistic focus and even consideration — an indirect reflection of the massive, tragic, and irreversible demographic changes to Uyghur existence shaped by the #Uyghurgenocide.
The author does not say it explicitly but subtly implies it, confirming our anxiety that Uyghur life, cultural and existential, is fast disappearing not only in reality in their homeland but in its representation in artistic works of colonialists and others.
https://t.co/gfudkGW31y
Today, representatives of the East Turkistan Government in Exile gathered outside the U.S. @StateDept to commemorate the 12th anniversary of the July 28, 2014 Yarkent Massacre and demand justice for East Turkistan.
Twelve years ago, China carried out one of the deadliest massacres in East Turkistan’s recent history, killing thousands of Uyghurs in Yarkent County, East Turkistan, just months after launching its ongoing campaign of genocide.
We call on the United States and the international community to move beyond statements and take meaningful action to hold China accountable, end the genocide, recognize East Turkistan as an occupied country, and support the restoration of East Turkistan’s independence.
Justice for Yarkent.
End China’s genocide.
End China’s occupation.
Restore East Turkistan’s independence
The East Turkistan Government in Exile strongly criticized the latest political consultations between @MFA_China and @MFATurkiye, accusing Ankara of deepening security cooperation with Beijing at the expense of the Uyghur/Turkic peoples in East Turkistan.
https://t.co/DYBJJDlYkx
PM @NurAbdulahat recently spoke to Italy's @Avvenire_Nei on China's ongoing Uyghur genocide. He stated that "the only thing that can improve the living conditions of the Uyghur people is decolonization and the restoration of East Turkistan's independence."
https://t.co/sKHZeRhblE
East Turkistan is not only the site of an ongoing genocide—it has become the strategic heart of China's global ambitions.
Today, @Avvenire_Nei, one of Italy's leading national newspapers, published an extensive feature on East Turkistan (which China calls "Xinjiang"), highlighting not only China's genocide against the Uyghurs and other Turkic peoples, but also why Beijing considers the occupied country indispensable to its rise as a global superpower.
The report explains that East Turkistan is central to China's economic and military strategy:
• It contains many of China's most critical mineral resources, including beryllium essential for semiconductor production.
• Its vast coal reserves provide the cheap energy powering China's mineral processing and industrial expansion.
• The Chinese government relies on state-imposed forced labor to exploit these resources.
• The occupied homeland serves as the backbone of the Belt and Road Initiative, allowing Beijing to project its influence across Asia, Africa, and Europe.
• East Turkistan is home to China's Lop Nur nuclear testing site and an expanding network of nuclear missile silos and strategic military infrastructure designed to strengthen China's military power.
• The surveillance technologies perfected against the Uyghur people are increasingly being exported around the world.
The article also features an interview with East Turkistan Government in Exile Prime Minister Abdulahat Nur, who warns that China is using genocide and demographic replacement to permanently erase the Uyghur and other Turkic peoples while transforming East Turkistan into the foundation of its global power.
As Prime Minister @AbdulahatNur states:
"East Turkistan is not a secondary issue. It is the foundation upon which China is building its global power."
The international community must recognize that the fate of East Turkistan is not only a human rights issue—it is also a matter of global security, international law, and the future balance of power. China's colonial occupation of East Turkistan fuels its military expansion, technological dominance, and growing geopolitical influence.
Congratulations on 250 years of #AmericanIndependence! Americans once cast off the yoke of a colonial empire. Today, East Turkistan fights to cast off the yoke of China's colonial empire. We call on America to support our struggle to restore independence from China's evil empire.
ETGE Condemns FIFA's Discrimination Against East Turkistan, Its People, and Its Flag
WASHINGTON, D.C. — The East Turkistan Government-in-Exile condemns the Fédération Internationale de Football Association (@FIFAcom) and demands the retraction of the discriminatory and defamatory statements directed at East Turkistan's national flag during the @FIFAWorldCup match between the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Uzbekistan in Atlanta on 27 June 2026.
FIFA-authorized personnel confiscated the flag from the spectators bearing it and pronounced it "prohibited," "a separatist flag," and "a militia flag," telling them that flags "hateful to other groups" were not permitted. Each of these characterizations is false.
East Turkistan's national flag was adopted by the First East Turkistan Republic in November 1933 and has stood as the national symbol of East Turkistan and its people ever since.
The East Turkistani people have lived under the military occupation and colonial administration of the People's Republic of China since 1949 and today endure an ongoing genocide recognized by the U.S. @StateDept and the parliaments of numerous democratic states, and crimes against humanity as assessed by the @UN.
Borne by the Uyghurs, Kazakhs, Kyrgyz, and other Turkic peoples of East Turkistan, the flag is the symbol of their national identity and self-determination, a right affirmed in the Charter of the United Nations and the International Covenants. It is the flag of an occupied nation, neither a "militia flag" nor a "separatist flag."
The label "separatist" misstates both law and fact. East Turkistan has existed as an independent nation throughout much of its history, interrupted by periods of foreign occupation, most recently by the People's Republic of China in late 1949. A territory and its people cannot "separate" from a state to which they never lawfully belonged; they seek the restoration of an independence extinguished by force, which international law does not recognize as lawful title.
"Separatist" is the vocabulary of the occupying power, which brands every assertion of East Turkistani identity as "separatism" to justify its occupation and colonial subjugation.
The "militia" label is equally false. The East Turkistan flag is the national flag of a country and its people, adopted by the East Turkistan Republic in 1933, not the flag of any militia.
Nor is the flag "hateful." It is the East Turkistani people who are subjected to hatred, racism, mass internment, genocide, and erasure by a hateful foreign regime. To brand the flag of the persecuted "hateful" is to mistake the victim for the perpetrator.
FIFA's own Stadium Policies prohibit materials "aimed at discrimination of any kind against a country, private person or group on account of race, skin colour, ethnicity, national or social origin… religion, political opinion or any other opinion… or on any other grounds."
That prohibition exists to protect peoples from discrimination. FIFA's representatives turned it into an instrument of discrimination. By confiscating the East Turkistani flag and branding it "separatist," "militia," and "hateful," they discriminated against the East Turkistani people on account of their ethnicity, their national origin, and the political opinion their flag expresses, the very grounds the policy names. That is precisely the conduct these rules forbid.
"East Turkistan's flag is the banner of an occupied nation facing genocide and erasure," said Dr. @MamtiminAla, President of the East Turkistan Government-in-Exile. "FIFA took the words of a hateful, racist regime waging genocide against us and turned them on its victims. FIFA must retract these defamatory statements, apologize, and hold those responsible to account."
📰ETGE Condemns Death Sentences Against Two Uyghurs in Bangkok Case Built on Torture and Chinese Pressure
WASHINGTON, D.C. — The East Turkistan Government in Exile (ETGE) condemns the death sentences handed down today by the Bangkok South Criminal Court against two Uyghur men, Bilal Mohammed and Yusuf Mirali, convicted through torture and a discredited process for the August 17, 2015 Erawan Shrine bombing.
The ETGE calls on the Government of Thailand to halt the executions and overturn the convictions.
The ETGE holds that the verdict rests on confessions extracted under torture, and that the case cannot be separated from China's campaign of transnational repression against the Uyghur people.
The ETGE condemns the bombing itself, which killed 20 people and injured more than 120, most of them tourists and worshippers. Condemning this atrocity and demanding a fair process for the two accused are not in conflict; both are demands of justice.
The prosecution relied on confessions the men say were beaten out of them and on purported evidence produced by the same investigation. Both recanted upon reaching the civilian court, testifying they had been tortured by Thai authorities and by individuals who appeared to be Chinese.
One month before the bombing, Thailand forcibly deported 109 Uyghur asylum-seekers to China under Beijing's pressure, after which China paraded the illegally refouled Uyghurs as "terrorists." The convictions serve that same Chinese propaganda narrative: that Uyghurs are "terrorists," a false pretext Beijing uses to justify genocide and crimes against humanity.
Bilal Mohammed testified he was beaten and forced to wear a wig, glasses, and a yellow shirt so he could be photographed to match the bomber on surveillance footage. He testified he had entered Thailand days after the bombing as a smuggling victim, and that the materials police claimed to find in the apartment the smugglers brought him to were planted or belonged to those smugglers. His lawyers noted his frame did not match the man in the footage.
The trial ran nearly eleven years. The judges ruled there was no evidence of torture; the ETGE rejects that finding. The International Commission of Jurists (@ICJ_org) called the proceedings so flawed the men should never have been convicted, and in 2023 the International Federation for Human Rights (@fidh_en) petitioned the UN over the arrests' lack of legal basis. No group ever claimed responsibility, and a third defendant was acquitted in 2024 for lack of evidence.
After the verdict, Mirali shouted that he was innocent, that he mourned for Thailand, and asked the Thai people to help him.
"Our people's struggle is lawful and has nothing to do with terrorism. These two men were convicted on a costume forced onto one of them and a confession beaten out of them and recanted, by an investigation respected jurists call unfit to support any conviction," said @SalihHudayar, Minister of Foreign Affairs and Security of the ETGE. "They were convenient scapegoats: stateless, voiceless, and Uyghur."
The ETGE calls on @UNHumanRights, democratic governments, and international organizations to pressure the Government of Thailand to halt the executions and overturn the convictions. The ETGE also calls on the international community to act against Beijing's transnational repression of Uyghurs.
@ThaiEmbDC@USEmbassyBKK
The East Turkistan Government in Exile congratulates the Kyrgyz Republic🇰🇬on its election to the @UN Security Council, a historic milestone for Central Asia. We look forward to Kyrgyzstan raising the critical issues facing Central Asian nations, including occupied East Turkistan.
Guilty - California mayor Eileen Wang just pled guilty this week after an @FBI investigation revealed she was covertly using her position to act as an agent of China. She’ll now face justice.
This FBI and @TheJusticeDept continue moving aggressively to root out foreign agents operating in America. https://t.co/QTSfZizjVf
"Our ultimate goal is independence of East Turkistan; because without independence we cannot guarantee our living, we cannot guarantee our basic human rights." - Prime Minister @NurAbdulahat
https://t.co/HyxfWwueGd
Interesting interview, but uninteresting for the absence of serious discussion about #China's role in the Iran war.
China’s role is immense, strategic, and ultimately transformative—turning all losses and victories in this war to its strategic advantage to claim hegemony and replace the US.
Omitting China from such a widely watched discussion is, at best, an intellectual negligence and, at worst, an ideological blindness, leading to a misleading focus on the US-Iran-Israel triangle while ignoring a bigger, deeper game behind it all.
Dr. Sayragul Sauytbay, the vice president of the East Turkestan government-in-exile (@ETExileGov) tells the @Independent's @alxcroft that the @UKLabour Government under PM @Keir_Starmer, has chosen to sweep China’s human rights record under the rug.
Full interview: https://t.co/Ru9xglOJR3
The ETGE urged the int'l community to take measures, including stricter enforcement of forced labour laws, targeted sanctions against officials, and legal action at int'l courts. It also called for recognition of East Turkistan as an occupied country.
https://t.co/IFevRrqZly