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- [00:21]
A
Hi there and thanks for listening. If you're enjoying our podcast and have a recommendation about someone you think we should have on to share their voice and journey with the world, by all means let us know. It could be an aid worker, monastic, author, journalist, doctor, resistance leader. Really anyone with some tie or another to the ongoing situation in Myanmar or anything related to its history or culture. To offer up a name, go to our website insight myanmar.org and let us know. But for now, just sit back and take a listen to today's episode.
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B
Sa. Foreign. Welcome to the Inside Myanmar Podcast. This is E and I will be your host today. For today's episode, we are joined by Minister Salihudaya. He's a foreign minister of East Turkistan government in exile. Thank you for joining our podcast today.
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A
Minister thank you for having me.
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B
So on Inside Myanmar, we are generally talking about Myanmar and issues related to Myanmar mostly. But today we're going to shift gear a little bit and talk about East Turkestan. And also it has a lot of different connection points, including the relations with a parallel between Rohingya crisis in Myanmar. And also I'm hoping that we could talk more about the behind the scene, look into running a government in exile. And before we talk all about that, and I want to mention that, you know, the minister, Sally Hudaya is listener for Inside Myanmar and the way that you found us is very interesting. Could you tell us how you found our podcast and how you have decided that we are going to have this conversation?
- [03:15]
A
Yes, I was actually forwarded your one of your podcasts that y' all did by a mutual colleague and they asked me to, you know, listen to it and see if, if I would be, you know, you know, because of the commonalities between our two causes in many ways and recommended that I reach out and see if we could talk about those shared commonalities and find a way to actually, in addition to just doing podcasts, to actually find a way to cooperate on some of our shared interests and shared missions.
- [03:58]
B
Yeah, I think it's my episode with Lorraine Pan that, you know, you wrote to Inside my about and you said that, you know, quoting, quoting you. It's like especially the way the rain pen described navigating China surveillance and censorship to find authentic voices from Hong Kong and Taiwan. So these are very important things and we can draw parallels from activists in Myanmar and also about resistance, solidarity and hope. So before we get into all of that, I want to talk more about you and you know, you in before, to be honest, before researching for the Podcast, I don't know much about East Turkistan. And now, you know, I really realize that East Turkistan is actually currently occupied by the Republic of China since 1949. And for our listeners might be familiar with the term Xinjiang, which is the term that China call East Pakistan as Shenzhen Uyghur Autonomous Region. So East Turkestan is historically known as the home for Turkic people, including Uyghurs, Kazakhs, Kbeks and Tatas. And for Minister, it is also your home. So you were born in a Uyghur village under Chinese rule, but now you're in Washington D.C. working for the government in exile. So I want to talk about the process and challenges of running a government in exile. But before we get into that, I'm interested in your journey and about how you got to where you are today.
- [05:35]
A
Yes, firstly, I just want to add a quick correction, is the People's Republic of China. East Turkestan is currently, in fact, Yesterday marked the 76th anniversary when the People's Republic of China overthrew the independent East Turkestan Republic and formally established its occupation over East Turkestan. And now getting back to my own story, I was actually born in East Turkestan. So I was born in 1993. I'm quite young for my position. I'm quite young, but I was born in East Turkestan in May of 1993 to a Uyghur merchant family in the city of Atush. So atush is about 45 km northwest of Kashgar, which is the historical capital as well as the present day cultural capital of Uyghurs and of East Turkestan. When I was born, during that period, this is right after the fall of the Soviet Union, the independence of the Central Asian republics formerly known as West Turkestan. And this led to a resurgence in our independence movement inside East Turkestan. So there were a lot of demonstrations, protests, civil acts of civil disobedience, as well as some small scale clashes between Uyghur militants and Chinese military forces. And everyone was pushing for the restoration of an independent East Turkestan Republic. So China began to, starting in 1992, really began to intensify its crackdown against our people. They started their opening or Going west project, which is essentially a, they call it, it's a, they try to frame it as a developmental project, but in real reality what it is is they were trying to facilitate the further colonization of East Turkestan by trying to recruit Chinese colonists to, you know, go settle in East Turkestan. Hence Go west because East Turkestan is western China. My upbringing during the early years, I didn't really know a whole lot. You know, I was 17 years old when I left in 2000. So the few instances in my memory is like growing up in my, in town, in the town of Atush, there were no Chinese civilians in, and not very few. It was Chinese officials working in the local government as well as the Chinese military forces that had been stationed at the, the base in Naj. So other than that, there was no, you know, Chinese civilians in that we, that we knew of at the time. So even today is predominantly Uyghur. Today it's still about 90% Uygh. And the Chinese make up less than 5, 6% of the population there because it's a remote mountainous village near a mountainous town near the border of Kyrgyzstan. So as a result of the uprisings, protests and the ensuing Chinese government crackdown, my father had fled East Turkestan in 1995 after a protest and then into neighboring Central Asia. And then in 1996, as the International community began to slowly pay attention to our plight, to where our leaders of our independence movement were meeting with the US Government, the EU Parliament, the uk you had, you know, and the media at the time was covering our independence movement, highlighting the fact that, you know, like for example, there were headlines like ancient warriors who defeated Alexander the Great are, you know, feeling China's Kosh or Uyghurs are demanding their independence, stuff like that. These were the headlines of those days. And in response to this, the Chinese government issued a top secret document called document number seven of 1996. So in March 19th of 1996, the CCP Politburo Standing Committee, which is the top seven officials of the CCP led by, at that time, it was Jiang Zemin, who's the head of China, they held a top secret meeting in Beijing on preventing East Turkistan's independence. And they highlighted that East Turkestan independence was the greatest threat to China's control over East Turkestan as well as the overall stability of China itself. So they issued a 10 point directive to crush our independence movement. And this pretty much laid down the blueprint for the ongoing genocide that we are seeing today. So things such as moving in more Chinese troops into the country to suppress any uprisings, to more checkpoints, to strictly controlling the borders, to preventing anyone from entering and leaving, to curtailing our culture, our religious beliefs, our language, again, moving millions of more Chinese colonists to, you know, alter the demographics, to, you know, even engaging. And when Co opting foreign governments, especially neighboring governments of Central Asia, like Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, which were essentially the base of operations for our independence movement outside of East Turkestan, as well as Turkey to, and using them to, you know, using those countries to subvert our independence movement. And it also calls for engaging in dialogue with our, you know, diaspora groups, leaders, winning over most of them, it says, to our side, meaning Beijing side, and then eliminating and fighting against the remaining separatists, meaning those who refuse to give up independence. It also called for engaging in research, collecting information and being aware of all issues related to our independence movement and preventing them, as well as using all means necessary, including killings, propaganda and terror, to undermine our independence movement and to prevent the internationalization of the East Turkestan problem. So shortly after this was published, within two weeks China launched this strike hard campaign against so called national separatism. And by the end of 1996, the Chinese government itself stated that within the first two weeks they claimed to have arrested tens of thousands of so called separatists, meaning those who were fighting for independence. And then by the end of the year they claimed to have arrested over a hundred thousand separatists. Hundreds were executed. Then In February of 1997, in February 5th of 1997, in the city of Ruja, which is in the northwest of East Turkestan, near the Kazakhstan border, the former capital of the second East Turkestan Republic, there was mass protest against the executions of 30 Uyghur independence advocates. And the Chinese government brutally crushed that protest. Hundreds of people were killed. And then even after that, they executed dozens of people they sentenced to death and executed them. So by the end of 98, though the Chinese government had effectively crushed our independence movement in Central Asia. It created the Shanghai Five Organization, which was the precursor for the Shanghai cooperation organization, the SCO. And then by 2000, essentially our independence movement inside East Turkestan and Central Asia was diminished to where it was just outside of, you know, in Europe, in North America, where we tried to keep it alive. And this was my father when he fled into Central Asia in 1995. By 1997, by the end of 1997, he had to flee Central Asia as well because Central Asia was no longer becoming safe. Many of our leaders at that time, independence leaders, were assassinated by, we believe, Chinese operatives. It's really unclear because the, the situations that they were assessed, assassinated in is very murky. In one instance, you know, they were attacked by a mass gunman. In another incident, her, one of our leaders, she was a woman. They found her. You know, body in a. In the city reservoir. So this types of things were. And this is not inside East Turkestan, this is outside in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan. So it was no longer becoming safe. And those governments of those countries in turn, also started arresting and handing over anyone that China wanted back to, you know, the Chinese authorities. So because Central Asia was no longer becoming safe, my father ended up initially fleeing to Europe and then from there made it into the US in 1998, 1998, where he then tried to. He applied for political asylum and then tried to reunite us, reunite with us, to bring us out. And at that time, getting a passport for Uyghurs, even now, it's nearly impossible. At that time, it was still very, very difficult for an average, you know, normal Chinese citizen. You know, to get a passport. You pay, you know, about fifty, sixty dollars, a couple hundred yuan. You put in your application within a week, a max to you get your passport with us. It's very difficult. You know, you have to have a lot of money to even go through that process because there's automatic rejection. They'll automatically reject our. Our passport applications. And so that means you have to bribe the officials because the security departments and whatnot, they. They don't give. They have to get permission from them to issue the passports. So despite the fact that, you know, and again, we come from a merchant family, so we were a little bit better off than most Uyghurs. You know, we tried. We, we went through the process. We, you know, essentially we. We had to bribe the Chinese, you know, local officials, and even after taking the bribes, they refused to, you know, issue the passport. So, so this is when my father, through his lawyer, was able to get the U.S. embassy in Beijing involved. And finally, the U.S. embassy gave the local government, the Chinese government, an ultimatum. The local government in ops, either you issue my passport or I will issue them travel documents, and either way they're going to come to the U.S. so that's how we ended up coming to the U.S. in June of 2000. I'm not sure if it was June 3rd or 4th. It was one of those days we arrived into United States, into Fort Dallas, Fort Worth. And then from there we drove to my father's apartment in Oklahoma City. And this is the only. Like, prior to that, I had no memory of my father. Like, he had left when I was two years old, so I had no memory of my father. All I knew was that, you know, every time we would see a plane going overhead, my grandmother would be like, your father will come back in one of those planes, stuff like that. So I didn't really know who my father was until I came to the United States. And immediately after, we drove back to our apartment. Before anything else, he sat us down. It was me, my older brother and my two sisters. And he said, I want you guys to remember, to know, understand why I brought you here. I brought you here to the United States. Not that so you could forget our homeland, our relatives, our country, but so you guys could become educated and you can do what I could not do to help our country, to free our country. This is your mission in life. This is why you are here. You're here so you can become educated and one day return to liberate our people in our country from the Chinese occupation. And so, pretty much, my father had a very great impact in shaping, you know, who I. Who I became and who I am. Because prior to that, the only thing, you know, because even talking. Talking about East Turkistan, in East Turkistan is very sensitive. You know, you can become labeled as a. As a, you know, a separatist, etc. And my family, historically, my. My father had learned about our independence movement when he was like, 14 years old. So his uncle in the 60s, had been sentenced to prison, over 15 years in prison before my father was even born for allegedly trying to create an armed organization to fight against, you know, the. The Chinese occupation. So when he came out of prison in the 70s, in the late. In the mid late 70s, my father, he was like 14 years old at that time. And so this is the first time he's meeting his uncle and he's like, you know, where were you? And he's like, I was in prison for what? He's like, oh, this is why I was in prison. You know, not that I was a bad guy, but, you know, we were under occupation. I was fighting. I was trying to fight to liberate our country. And so my father got, you know, that's how he got pulled into the independence movement. And he got overexcited, you could say. And he started up putting. With him and his friends, they started up putting up posters, flyers across town in the middle of the night telling the Chinese invader, not. Not that there's, you know, a whole lot of Chinese, you know, there, but the Chinese security forces are there telling them to, you know, leave our country, you know, go back to. Go back to China. And so they got caught after, you know, I guess the security. Chinese security forces, they, you know, did a surveillance and they got. They caught him. And so they were all expelled from school. So my father was like in the, in the ninth grade and that was it. That was the highest education he was able to, to, to get, unfortunately because of that. So he, he's a self educated man. And so even in the, in after 97, like one time they raided our home in the middle of the night because alleged one of my uncles apparently read a book that was a book on her history. That and book anything that relates to our history of being, you know, that is not the, the sanctioned version by China. And that sanctioned Chinese version is that, you know, we were always under China. You know, we were never, you know, we were just a minority under China and China has ruled this place, blah, blah, blah. But the book was about, you know, our independent country less than, you know, 50 years prior, like 40 years prior to that. And so someone apparently caught one him reading this book. And so they reported him and so they raided our home, they arrested him for, for, you know, being a member of a separatist, you know, organization, so called separatist organization. And they started digging up the entire house, our yard, everything to trying to find this book and trying to get him to confess to his crimes. And so this was my first real interaction with the Chinese government and the Chinese security forces was when they raided our home in the middle of the night and they pointed guns, their AK47 rifles on to everyone's head, including mine, threatening to, you know, kill us if he didn't confess to his crimes. And so my uncle ended up confessing to, you know, what, you know, just telling him whatever they said because my grandma, my great grandmother, she was like, this child is your older brother's amanet, which means in our language, it's like trust. He entrusted us with him, so just tell him what they want to hear. And that was that. And even before coming to the US like that is when I was like, I want to become, you know, a general one day. This is way before I even came to the U.S. i was like, I want to become a general one day. I want to fight them. And I mistakenly thought they were the Russians because in like I didn't know, you know, they were Chinese or, you know, I could differentiate that because what I do, what I would hear is the elders, you know, talking about how if the Russians hadn't screwed us, you know, if it had been for the Russians, we would have been an independent country by now because the Soviets ended up helping the Chinese Communist occupy our country. So that's what they were referring to. So until I came to the U.S. i thought the Chinese were the Russians until my father, you know, corrected that history after coming to the U.S. so when we came to the U.S. like, again, this is from day one, this is what our father, you know, told us. This is your mission in life. This is what you know, this is what you need to do. And so for both my brother, my older brother and I, he wanted us to have military careers. And so that was our focus, was to become, you know, military officers. In 2009, I became a US citizen right around the time that the Urumqi massacre happened inside East Turkestan. And the Urumqi massacre was in July. So what sparked it, and this is the reason why YouTube got banned in all of China was because the Chinese government, as part of their, you know, so called developmental colonial project, they're bringing in hundreds of thousands of Chinese colonists to East Turkistan every year. At the same time they're saying, oh, there's surplus, saying that there's not enough people there to work and develop the country. But at the same time they're saying, oh, there's surplus labor. And they're taking our young people out of East Turkestan again to assimilate them in the Chinese centric environment to China to work as forced labor. So In June of 2009, at a toy factory in Shandong near Guangdong province, some where several hundred Uyghur said there was saying like 7 to 800 workers were working at that factory. And some Chinese workers who were laid off, they spread a rumor that, oh, you know, these Uyghurs are taking our jobs. They're, you know, harassing our women. And so a mob came to the factory, an armed mob. And the security, you know, at the, the guards at the, the weirdest thing is the security guards at the toy factory, they just let him in. And they're all armed with clubs, you know, those pikes with like metals, things like nails sticking out. And they began a rampage, attacking all the Uyghur workers. And they uploaded these videos in which they're like, oh, I just killed 20 of them. You know, gloating about how they're killing these u. You know, and they uploaded this, the Chinese themselves, the attackers themselves uploaded this onto YouTube. And as a result, because this is one YouTube still available in, in all of the PRC, our people saw that in East Turkestan and we were like, well, the Chinese government claims that we're citizens, that we're equal. You know, this is the, the narrative that they, that they put out. And so thousands of people took to the street, mostly students, and they carried the Chinese flag, demanding equality, demanding an investigation into what happened, you know, and, you know, demanding justice, you know, hold those who kill these Uyghur accountable. And what the Chinese government does is what it always does when Uyghurs protest, which is just start shooting at them and telling them to go home. If they don't go home, then just shoot him and arrest him. And that was what happened. And so at this point, you know, some of the one there, there were, there's, there were potentially agent provocateurs, you know, Chinese government agents within the protesters who tried to, you know, provoke them to becoming more violent. But also because you're getting shot at by people are not going to just be like, oh, I'm, you know, they're shooting at me, let me just accept that. So some people decide to, you know, push back. And so this turned into rioting. And then within several days, the Chinese government claimed that, you know, they arrested 1600 people, you know, rioters, again, all Uyghurs. And that, you know, only 200, that 200 something people died. And they were mostly Chinese, which is not the case because they, they didn't show the fact that, you know, Uyghur were being shot by Chinese government forces. However, 10,000 people disappeared within one to two weeks because they went home to home. And they even like 10 years. On the 10th anniversary of the Urumqi massacre in 2019, on YouTube, some Chinese account published a video footage of that time where Chinese security forces, the aftermath where they went home to, home to every Uber's house, stripped them naked if they had any bruises because they, they were shooting them with, you know, rubber bullets and other things. If they, if they had any, any sign of bruises on their bodies, the men were taken away. And again, as they're being taken away, there's Chinese people armed, you know, armed with clubs, supposedly civilians, but if you look at their haircuts and stuff like that, they're probably Chinese, you know, undercover police officers and beating those that are being, you know, are being dragged through the streets with, you know, naked in their underwear. And this is not just one, this is hundreds in that, in that 30 minutes long video. And a lot of after that the women had taken out the street, you know, protesting like, where are her husbands? Where are our sons? You know, where are they? And so because of that, the Chinese government not only banned YouTube but they enacted a, a year long ban on, on like, you know, like cut off all communications, Internet, external, you know, phone calls from coming in from overseas. So we had lost contact between 2009, 2010. But that's around the same time that I became a US Citizen. And then this is also when China began to. After the Urumqi massacre, they began to set up their surveillance apparatus. And so coming to that period, I finished high school, and initially I wanted to go to a military academy because. But when I was supposed to apply, I was not a US Citizen at the time when I applied, so I wasn't able to get the recommendation. So I ended up doing a Reserve Officer Training Corps at the university. And then at the same time, I joined the Oklahoma Army National Guard to give me some experience to. When I finish, when I become an officer, I'll have a little bit more experience than just, you know, someone who just studied to be an officer. Then, unfortunately, this was 2011. And then by the end of 2013, the summer of 2013, because of a emergency appendectomy that I had after a field training exercise, it was discovered that I had polycystic kidney disease. So that killed off my military career. And so they're like, dude, you got polycystic kidney disease. You can't be qualified to serve. So I was given a medical discharge, and I was. I was deeply depressed. To be honest, I was deeply depressed for about. I'd say about at least three, four months. And I didn't know what to do. And I was like, what am I gonna do? Like, this was. This was the. The road that I had set out. This was what I was going to do. Then I discovered, you know, okay, after, you know, going through my depression mode, and then I was like, all right, what other ways can I work to help my people? So I was like, all right, well, let me study political science, international studies. Maybe I can go after this. After I graduate, I'll probably, you know, go work for, you know, State Department or some other government agency and try to help my people that way. And so in 20. In the end of 2016, this is when I was graduating. But it's also the election cycle where at that time, it was, I believe, Clint, Hillary Clinton against now President Donald Trump. And all of them were saying the same thing, we need to be tough on China. So I took that opportunity to write a policy proposal as my capstone for my bachelor's program. So I wrote a policy proposal called Refining the American Grand Strategy from Central Asia to the Uyghur. And again, I highlighted our plight, but I also highlighted that, you know, East Turkestan is, you know, vital in pushing back against, you know, China's rise and expansion and so coming back a little bit. So after 2009, actually in 2000, after the 2009 Rumchi massacre, in November of 2009, there was the Chinese National Defense University. They held a, an event or a lecture or seminar on the future war between the United States and China over Taiwan, which they stated is going to happen around 2030. And in that, one of the key lecturer, he was then a senior pla Air Force colonel. Then he later became a general. He. And he later became the head of the National Defense University itself. He, he asked, you know, the, the audience, which is Chinese military officials, intelligence officials. And he said, well, you know, we have the capability to take Taiwan now, but do you know what is preventing us from doing that? Why do you think we can't take Taiwan now? They all say different things. And he says, no, you're wrong. It's because of the East Turkestan problem. And he said, if we were to get into a conflict with the United States over Taiwan, the United States would easily arm 300,000 to half a million Uyghurs overnight. He said, that's the word that he used, overnight. And they would cut off our west to east pipelines and we would not be able to sustain that war. We would lose. And he said, this is the biggest threat that we have right now. And he said we need to resolve this. And another issue is, he said, the Strait of Malacca, we have dilemma there because right now 80% of China's oil, natural gas and trade goes through this trade of Malacca. If we were to, you know, if, if this war breaks out, the U.S. another of its partners in the region, could put up a blockade and again, we would not be able to sustain that war. We would lose. So we need to find a solution to this immediately. And he said, on the surface, on the East Turkestan problem, we're going to portray it as counterterrorism. Of course we know that's not true. Like this is. You can find this on YouTube. It's still, it's on YouTube. It's about two and a half hours long. I said, we can, you know, on the surface we're going to say that we're fighting terrorism because it's going to be more believable. But of course we know that's not true. So after that, that's when they started implementing. And he said, I have a plan and I'm, I'm going to speak to the higher ups about this. And, and hopefully we can resolve this soon and be prepared. So essentially, I think they are following through his plan because starting in 2010, they started setting up, you know, bringing in more troops, setting up checkpoints all across East Turkestan to where in 2013, Xi Jinping came to power. The first thing he did after coming to power, becoming president, is he declared the Belt and Road Initiative, which is a multi trillion dollar, supposedly infrastructure project. But in reality it's much more than that. It's actually part of China's both war planning strategy, but also part of its later expansion strategy because it's about controlling key, you know, key ports, including land ports, airports, railways, roads, etc. That China can use later in the future to potentially expand. And I know they've invested a lot in Thailand as well through, through the Belt and Road Initiative, trying to take up certain ports. In fact, one of the one. So one of the reasons why the Rohingya crisis broke out is because China wants access to that western waterway in that Rockline area. And of course, the Rohingya are an obstacle to that. But what that would do is it would help China potentially evade the blockade in the Strait of Malacca. It would give them access that way. So this is part of the reason that China is doing this. It's not just to help develop Thailand or any other countries for their own military and future expansionist plans. So the Belt Road Initiative, out of the six major gateways of the Belt and Road Initiative, three of them run through East Turkestan. So every connection, all land connections connecting China to Central Asia, South Asia to Europe, the Middle east, goes through East Turkistan. So again, we, we are an obstacle to that. So immediately China begins to claim that it's fighting against terrorism. Xi Jinping goes to East Turkistan in April of 2014, and he gives the infamous speech at a Chinese military base where he tells them to, you know, show absolutely no mercy, to crush, to, you know, to crush our roots, to, you know, ensure that we are completely destroyed. After he gives that tour, two days later, as his plane takes off, Urumqi back to Beijing, a bombing happens at a train station in a suitcase bombing. And the only video evidence that the Chinese government show is some. It doesn't show who, who the person is. You can't tell if they're, if they're Chinese, if they're, you know, who they are. All it is is someone wearing like a jacket, carrying a suitcase, like wearing a suit, carrying a suitcase, leaving the suitcase, walking away in a couple like, less than, like 20, 30 seconds later, an Explosion happens immediately. China says this is carried out by Uyghur terrorists, that Uyghur are the ones who are doing this. And of course the international community doesn't buy it because historically our resistance has never, you know, targeted civilians. It's always been any clash that has happened, it's always been between Chinese military security forces. And the only bombings that did take place in the past was bombings of oil refineries, you know, oil pipelines, stuff like that, infrastructure, not against any civilians. So that's not believable. So the international community fails to buy that. Two weeks later a second bombing happens again. This time it's by some individuals drive, apparently driving a, a jeep or something, throwing some explosives out of, at a vegetable market where most of the people there at the vegetable market were Chinese. And again China claims that oh, this is terrorists who did it. But again there's, they don't show any, there's no evidence of the people doing it as being ulur any other group. And we believe this was a Chinese false flag intelligence, false flag operation carried out to, you know, to, to justify its, its genocidal policies. So immediately after that, after the second bombing happens, less than a day later, China declares the people's war against terrorism. So this is the euphemism that it has been using to justify its ongoing genocidal policies, campaign of genocide. But it was all. It would only be years later that we would realize that all of this was actually pre prepared because pre prepared in the sense that if you look at the satellite imagery analysis, you can find this on Google of the concentration camps that they built. There's over 1400 camps. If China did this as a response to the so called, you know, the, the false flag attacks that it carried out, then those camps should have been built, you know, after May 2014, you know, or in June or after 2000, after May of 2014. But when you look at the satellite imagery analysis, because on Google, one thing about Google Earth is you can see, you know, over the period how one, you know, one area has changed. Many of these areas were starting to become excavated, cleared as early as 2010 and the prisons and the concentration camps were being erected as early as 2011. So China had everything in place in system. That's why Xi Jinping went in April to give the final order like everything's been prepared, now we just have to implement it. So initially China began to arrest men between the ages of 15 and 45 on the basis that they're prone to become radicalized, they're prone to rebel against the state. And within the first two first year, over 200,000 men were taken. But China's own white paper from 2020, September of 2020, stated that they actually took 1.29 million people per year starting from 2000, every single year starting from 2014. So this is a rapid, you know, movement and where millions of our people were thrown into these camps. And it was only by 2016 that pretty much everyone began to become affected by it in the sense that that's when we started losing contact with any of our relatives inside East Turkistan, where they were no longer picking up, or those who did pick up, saying, don't ever call me again, like I have nothing to do with you. Leave us alone, we're too old to go to school. School, the euphemism for the concentration camps because China calls it vocational training and education centers or re education centers. So by 2016, as I'm finishing up college, I do this and I'm losing contact so with my relatives and I discover that our existing organizations, because we have human rights groups who advocate for human rights and better conditions under Chinese rule. But I realized that for us, the only way to survive at this point is if we were at a very critical position. And I said at that time, we have maybe 10, 15 years, maybe a maximum 20 year window to reverse this situation to where if we are able to get our independence within the next two decades, we will exist as a nation, as a people. If not, we will be forever buried in history. And this is what China's aim is, is precisely to do that. Because China's not just locking up people in concentration camps to educate them. No, in these concentration camps, people are being forced, they're undergoing forced indoctrination, they're being tortured. Both men and women are being raped systematically, you know, abused. You have, you know, or the Chinese government itself stated in its2016 or 2017 military doctrine, it stated that it had the capabilities to carry out ethnic specific genetic attacks against its enemies. And China has long declared us as enemies of, of the people, as enemies of the state, etc. In addition to that, the Chinese government, state Media reported in 2018 that between 2016 and 2017 they carried out, they collected the DNA samples, voice prints and retina scans of 36 million, 36 million so called ethnic minorities. So ethnic minorities is the term that the Chinese government uses to refer to anyone who's not Chinese. If you're not Han Chinese, you're, you're categorized as an ethnic minority between the ages of 12 and 65 in the so called autonomous region. So in East Turkestan, they collected 36 million people's DNAs, voice prints, retina scans. Then they started erecting crematoriums across East Turkestan. Within two years, they built over 121 crematoriums. And within two years they've built over 121 crematoriums across East Turkestan, many of them really close to these concentration camps. And we are predominantly Muslim people. We don't bury our dead. We don't cremate our dead. That's against our religion. We bury them. You know, we have to bury our dead instead of cremating them. Yet this is China's expanding crematoriums. And then they started building special lanes at the airports across East Turkistan where you would see, you know, a special, you know, special lane with a sign that says for organ transplants only. So they were harvesting our people's organs. It is estimated by experts like Ethan Goodman that a conservative estimate of anywhere from 25,000 to 50,000 Uyurs are killed every single year starting in 2014 for organ harvesting alone. So over the past decade, anywhere from a quarter, at minimum a quarter million to half a million of our people have been killed solely for their organs. Because this is the same time that organ harvesting, or organ transplants, as China calls it, skyrocketed. In fact, earlier this year, the Chinese government, they declared that they were going to expand the number of organ transplant centers in East Turkestan by threefold. So this in itself shows that they're going to continue to, you know, carry out this genocide. So in 2017, nobody's talking about this. Our own human rights organizations are refusing to address this issue. So as I was finished up college and I sent my policy proposal with the help of some of my professors to various, you know, government bodies, including Congress, we started receiving responses. You know, what Uyghur organization are you with? At that time? Even in my policy proposal, I mentioned that there were two main Uyghur groups. One was the East Pakistan government in exile, and the other one was the World Uyghur Congress. And I said, you know, the World Uyghur Congress, they don't advocate for independence. They don't even use the word independence. They don't even rarely use the word East Turkestan. In fact, they, prior to 2004, it was one entity known as the East Turkestan National Congress. And it split into two in 2004 over precisely the issue of East Turkistan and independence versus we're just gonna advocate for cultural and human rights under China, which became the wc. So I said, you know, the US Government needs to essentially bring these two together. That's what I had advocated in my policy proposal, that it needs to, you know, support the independence movement, but it needs to merge these together to create a solid, you know, government in exile, like that of the Tibetan government in exile. And it needs to enact a weaker policy act. It needs to recognize our East Turkistan in the same way that it recognizes Tibet, as well as other things that I detailed in there that they. They needed to do. So we started receiving responses, and again, I'm not part of neither the government in exile nor the WC at the time. I'm not part of any organization. And so I was like, I can't speak on behalf of those organizations. And so my professor, she was like, you know, before an independence movement really takes shape, the first thing that happens is that there's a national awakening movement amongst the people. So that's how or the East Turkistan National Awakening movement was born. So I founded other young Uyghurs and Kazakhs who grew up from East Turkestan, who grew up in the United States, like myself, and we created Aetnam and in the summer of 2017 and began advocating for not, just, you know, human rights, but also our political rights, because without political rights, there. There's no guarantee of your human rights. And we made that our emphasis. So we began engaging awareness about the ongoing genocide. We were the first entity to call it a genocide. And others thought we were, you know, exaggerating it or that we were, you know, overblowing the situation and that, you know, we. We called them con. We called it what it was concentration camps. In fact, even our human rights groups opposed us saying that, oh, you're exaggerating it. You know, these are re education centers. They're using the Chinese government's terminology and saying that, you know, you know, we were undermining our human rights cause by pushing for independence by calling it East Turkistan, by calling it a genocide. And I said, no, if anything, by us doing this, then maybe you can get that little bit of human rights. Because even in a negotiation, if you ask for the lowest thing, you won't get nothing. If you ask for the highest thing, then you might have a, you know, a chance of getting the lowest thing. Because this is how it works in reality. If you don't cry for something, nobody's gonna come. You know, even if a baby doesn't cry for milk, you know, that is hungry. No one's gonna come, you know, and give milk to that baby. So you have to cry for it. So this, we have to be very vocal about this. So starting in 2017, we began actively advocating for recognition of the genocide, for a Uyghur policy act, for recognition of East Turkistan. And then I moved up to D.C. in August of 2017 because again, I, I thought I found that working from Oklahoma was not going to, it was going to be difficult. I needed to actually engage face to face with the members of, of Congress as well as the think tanks, as well as, you know, State Department and others here. So I moved up here in D.C. and then in 2018, we were able to successfully, you know, get the U.S. government, the U.S. congress to introduce a WER act in, in Congress, we, from June till July, every single day until they introduced it, we held daily demonstrations from 9:00am to 5:00pm in front of the, the U.S. capitol building. And we called all our, our diaspora in the United States to come join us. You know, we were like, come take, you know, one, one day out of your week. You know, come fly out here, do this, because you're doing this to save your family, to save your, your brothers and sisters. And we told them, you know, we will take you whichever state you're from, we will take you to meet with your senator, his office, to meet with your representatives so that they can understand that this is not just our just one or two Ubers, but this is all Uber is being affected. So we did both grassroots advocacy as well as direct advocacy, held a lot of meetings. And finally after a month, it paid off. Finally they're like, all right, you know, we believe this is becoming serious. And slowly government Congress began speaking out. Then the U.S. government, State Department and others began speaking out. Then the media started picking up on the issue. And this was when in 2019, because of my popularity, I didn't just do this in the US I mobilized others. I networked online, found other youth in other parts of, you know, across the world, in Europe and France, Germany, Sweden, Netherlands, Belgium, all of these European countries, in Turkey, even in Central Asia. And I said, you need to do the same thing in your countries. We all need to be pouring out to the streets because we are facing a genocide. Like this is unprecedented in the 21st century. If we do not cry, if we do not get our voices heard, nobody will care about us. Because this is the sad reality. If you want something, you have to go, go and get it. So we effectively mobilized our entire diaspora, especially the youth, you know, other existing organizations. They felt threatened by it, especially those advocating for human rights and autonomy. And they're accused of trying to divide the community and whatnot. And I said, no, it's already been divided. You guys are the ones who divided. Because prior to 2004, all of our groups were East Turkestan. The mission of our entire diaspora, all the organizations was independence. It's you guys who divided it in 2004 and then watered it down to Xinjiang and autonomy and under, you know, and human rights. And did we get any human rights? No. The situation deteriorated far worse. We. We got more and more oppressed. And I said, I'm not here. I'm not here to take your position. I'm not here to replace you guys. You guys do your own thing. Let us do our own thing. You know, this was the way we went. And the government in exile, they were like, hey, seeing my success in mobilizing our global diaspora and even governments, they're like, we want you to represent us. You know, could you be our representative here to the US Even though the government itself is based in the US and so because in principle, you know, I advocate for independence, they advocate for the same thing. You know, there was a few things that I didn't agree with on them, but overall, we had the same mission, more or less. So I said, okay, I agreed to then. This was in April 2019, then in June of 2019, every four years, the government next all had parliamentary elections. So this was their parliamentary election period. And so I was one of the 10 candidates who were nominated to represent our das per community in the US to our parliament in exile. And so I, along with, I believe at the time, like four or five others, we got the most votes. You know, you have to get at least half of the votes to be become a candidate. If you don't get. If you get less than half, you're not going to be considered because it wouldn't be democratic. So we ended up becoming parliamentary candidates. And then after, like their background check again, they looked into your background. If you are someone who's ever, you know, served the Chinese government or the Chinese Communist Party, or if you have, you know, family members who, you know, work those Chinese Communist Party officials, security forces, etc, you're permanently disqualified because it's. It's a security risk. So after that, in November of 2019, at the 8th General assembly of our parliament in exile. So our government, the way it's set up is because of the nature of Our diaspora, but also because of, you know, the actual infiltration, threats and whatnot that we receive from China. It was set up, it was like a parliamentary based government exile. So each country where we have representatives or where we have that large diaspora communities, they can elect up to at max maximum of 10. And the reason they did this is because we have diaspora, large diaspora communities in like 14, 15 countries. And if each of them were to elect, know, if we were to do it on the actual population basis, you know, for example, in Kazakhstan, we have over, you know, anywhere from 300,000 to half a million U. If all of them, if we were to give them more representatives because of their population size, then effectively our government in exile would be influenced by Kazakhstan. And Kazakhstan is a member of the SEO, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. So our representatives are going to be increasingly pressured by the Kazakh government to, you know, do certain things. So to prevent one country, one host country from dominating our government in exile's mission, it's objectives, and from dominating, you know, from influencing it. This is the way that they had set it up was like each country can elect up to 10 and then those elected officials in turn convene the parliament in exile, and the parliament in exile will elect the government leadership. So In November of 2019, at the 8th General assembly, despite, you know, randomly, they just nominated me along the two others who had, who had presented themselves as candidates for the position of the prime minister. And I, you know, tried to object because again, it was way too much for me to, to do that at that time. I don't know how to even speak my own language as properly as I can today, you know, because I didn't grow up amongst ultras. I grew up in Oklahoma. And so I was like, no, this is not going to work out. You know, I'll take some, you know, I'll just stick with the current position that I have. I don't think I can do this. But they're like, no, you're the perfect person for this. You're young, you, you have, you know, you can articulate our people's cause. What we haven't been able to do over the past, you know, decade, you have already been doing within the past year, past two years. So we want you to, you know, be, be the next prime minister. And so I did, I was, I was like, no, they're like, like, let's just put it to a vote. I was hoping I wouldn't get the maximum votes, but I ended up getting more votes than the other two candidates. And I ended up becoming the prime minister of the government in exile. And so I feel I fulfilled that position until November of 2023. Under my leadership, we were able to. We. The first thing I did was file a based off of the Rohingya precedent. So I attended a event in. Right after I was elected. I think it was like two weeks after I was elected as the prime minister. I attended an event on the Rohingya genocide, which was organized by Stephen Rapp and a couple of others on the ICC case that they had filed. And so I spoke to some of the lawyers. I was like, wait, but Myanmar is not a member of the ICC state. How is this possible? And they're like, but Bangladesh is. And because part of the population, you know, they were forced into Bangladesh because of the crimes there. This gave the ICC the jurisdiction. So I spoke with their lawyers, and I was like, wait, we have the same case. We. We had people that were deported out of Central Asia, like Kyrgyzstan, Afghanistan, even, unfortunately, Thailand, Cambodia. And I said, you know, what about us? And so they're like, well, based on the Rohingya precedent, because the ICC accepted their case. And that's why they held this event, was to highlight that the ICC accepted the case. So they introduced me to a couple of lawyers, and then there was actually a lawyer in the UK who had approached other Uyghur groups, the other groups that I mentioned urging them, hey, let's. Let's file a case at the ICC similar to, you know, the Ringa case. I believe we can. We can do this. And our own groups, unfortunately, you know, they're like, no, that'll upset China. It'll make things worse. We don't want to do that. So when. When that lawyer heard about me or the government exile and us wanting to do the same thing, he actually came all the way from London to D.C. and he said, you know, we met. And so we decided to file a case. So initially we wanted to file it in April, but Covid happened then. This is 2020. Then I was supposed. I, along with our president and others, we were supposed to go to the Hague to do this in person in July in. To commemorate the July 2009 Urumqi Massacre. Line it up with that. But again, because of COVID we were denied entry again. They said, you have to wait like 10 days or something. So we ended up coming back to Washington. Our lawyers did the event. We did like the live stream eventually, and we filed the case. So we spearheaded the first ever legal attempt to hold China accountable for genocide and crimes against humanity. The initial filing was over 86 pages and we listed all the key Chinese officials, including Xi Jinping and entities that were responsible. And some of the entities that we mentioned there, like the xpcc, the Shanghai, the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps, which is a now 3 million plus strong paramilitary force initially set up in 1954, specifically tasked to colonize East Turkestan. And they overrun the, the concentration camps and all of the other officials. So we had listed all of this and then we, you know, told the State Department, you know, we're, we, we filed this case, we would, we would appreciate it if you guys could also sanction these Chinese officials. So within, you know, two, three days out, three days after our, our filing, the State Department sanctioned the XPCC and their officials, though they couldn't sanction Xi Jinping because again, he's the head of state. So that, that was another initiative that we did then. We pushed for the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act. We then I began to, you know, reach out to parliaments across the world, including Canada, anywhere where we had diaspora communities. We began engaging with, you know, reaching out to their governments, their parliaments to try to get them to recognize the genocide. So initially In October of 2020, we were actually able to get the Canadian Parliament to introduce a motion recognizing the genocide. And in turn I used, I took that and persuaded the US Congress, the Senate to condemn the genocide. And then we again began pressing the State Department to do the same thing. But we've been doing this since 2017. That was one of our key priorities was to get the genocide recognized. And so in January 19th of 2021, the US government officially recognized it as a genocide. And then we took that recognition to engage with, you know, the various European Parliaments we were already engaging with and persuaded them to, you know, recognize it as a genocide as well. So that was pretty much the, the scope of much of the things that I did under, as the pm. Of course, there's a lot of, we held events with think tanks or civil society. We held, we held events at parliaments, briefings. It's, we regularly, you know, engaged with the media, highlighted the atrocities. So this is by 2021, 2022 or 2020, 2021, our issue was being, you know, highlighted regularly in the media. However, the Ukraine crisis happened, then the war in, in Gaza and RSU got effectively sidelined.
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I can hear from your story and your journey that you feel immense responsibility that you carry with you in your role as a Uyghur resettling in the United States and Also your role as a former prime minister and your current role as a foreign minister. You mentioned that the importance of naming names, you know, starting with the naming of your region, instead of calling the way that China labels Xinjiang, you call it East Turkistan. And also and the importance of recognition and naming it as genocide. So can you for our listeners. I know you mentioned it briefly in your, in your telling of the stories of how you come about, but, you know, could you go into further details about what the word Xinjiang means and why do you prefer to use East Turkistan?
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Yes. So historically, East Turkestan has been the homeland of Uyghur and other Turkic peoples since, you know, like thousands of years. In fact, the Uyghur, we are a hybrid people. Like we are the intermixing of two major population groups. One is the local Indo European population of the Tar Basin, which recent archaeological genetic studies show that they've inhabited East Turkestan since the time of the Ice Age, since the end of the Ice age, so about 10,000 years ago. And this was an isolated group. And the second is the North Eurasian group, the Turkic ancestry. And they've been in East Turkestan for about 4 or 5,000 years, mostly in the north. And these two populations started intermixing about 2300 to 2900 years ago, forming gradually forming what we are now known as Uyghurs. So this is why you find that some Uyghurs in the south especially, they look more Indo European, some even look European, whereas the ones north, they look more, you know, Central Asian, like Kazakh, kyrgyz or Mongol, etc. So for thousands of years, East Turkistan has been, you know, the homeland of Uyghurs and other Indo European and Turkish peoples. Our story conflicting with China really goes back about 2,000 years ago. About 2,000 years ago, there was a great power competition between the, the Chinese, the Han Empire or the Han Dynasty and the, the Hun Empire. The Hun is like, like, until it, a Hun like the, the Turkish people. And during that period, the, this is when China begins to send its emissaries to the west to try to build up a coalition to fighting, you know, to fight against the hunts. And so that fails. However, they set up, you know, diplomatic, they set up like diplomatic missions because at that time East Turkestan was governed by about, you know, 30 or so city states, so kingdoms, largely city states. And China began to, you know, work with some of those city states to try to oppose the, the Huns. The Huns also tried to do the same thing work with us to try to, you know, oppose the, the Chinese. So there was a brief period in which the Chinese Han Dynasty, they occupied a far eastern part of East Turkestan near the. Whereas today Kumul and Turpan for about 50 years. I mean, they ruled it like they established. They didn't actually rule it. They established a military base and they coerced those two, three kingdoms to align with them in their war against the Huns. So that lasted about 50 years. Then they fled, then they were pushed out. And then I thought for about a thousand years. Nothing else from the Chinese. We have no, you know, no Chinese presence, no Chinese, you know, coming to East Turkistan for another thousand years, almost another thousand years. And then around the seventh century, they show up again under the Tang Dynasty. This is during when they're fighting against the Tibetan Empire. And so they, at that time, this is when Turkistan is beginning to take shape. So this is when the coin Turkestan came in the fifth century. So in the fifth century, the, the Ashina tribe, which are actually an Indo European people, they rise up in East Turkistan in the northern part of East Turkistan. And they establish the Kaganate and the cook Turk in 552, where k means the Sky Turks or the Blue Turks or the Celestial Yoturg. So that has three different meanings. And they create a vast empire starting from East Turkestan stretching all the way till, you know, near Korea to the Caspian Sea. And it was called Turkilly or Turkestan. So Turkestan literally means the country of the Turks. So referred to the Kaganate. And so this was the first time that, you know, since then we've been referred to as Turkestan. And then the Chinese, they began to, you know, feel threatened by, you know, Turkestan or the Turkish Kaganate. And they began to engage in military expedition. Initially they divided into two, an Eastern Turk Kaganate and a Western Turkic Khaganate. Then using the Western Turkic Kaganate, they enslaved the Eastern Turkic Kaganate and occupy
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it
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in which that lasted another 70 years. And then the Turkic peoples rise up again and redeclare their independence as the Turkic Khanate. Then a coup d' etat happened in 840, in 744 CE and one of the tribes that engaged in the coup d', etat, they rename it as the. And they began saying that we are the Uyghur Khaganate. And Uyghur means the civilized, like Uyghur it means united or allies or civilized. So it has three different meanings. So that lasted until 8, 40, until the Chinese then used the Tang, supported the Kyrgyz to overthrow the Uyghur Khaganate. And after the Uyghur Khaganate was overthrown, it split into two major kingdoms, you can say, or Khanates. One was the Karkan Incarnate based out of, you know, southern, southwestern East Turkistan and neighboring regions. And the other one was the state which was from the Great Wall till about the center of East Turkestan. Then the Mongol invasion came. And instead of fighting against the Mongols, the elect Uyghur Khanate actually served, you know, they worked with Genghis Khan. And this is why the Mongol script, they use the traditional Uyghur script. So Uyghur ended up becoming the military advisors, tax officials, states, generals of the Mongol Empire. And then with the fall of the Mongol empire in the 14th century, East Turkistan was ruled by the Arkans Khanate starting in the 1500s, which was our last major state, you could say, which was until 1705. Then in 1705, the Jungal Mongols, remnants of of the Mongols, they invaded East Turkestan and well, they had already since the 1500s, slowly was seeping in from the north and conquered much of the Northern. This by 1705, they overthrew the Aran Khanate and ruled it as a left it under rule of the Nakshandi Hojas. So these are. They claim to be a Sufi Islamic group. They originally originated from somewhere either in Syria or Iran and made their way into East Turkistan. So they played a key role in facilitating the, the overthrow of the Arkhan Khanate. The Hojas were actually banished by our kingdom because they tried to undermine our authority. So then they turned and went to Tibet and made a deal with the Dalai Lama of the time. And the Dalai Lama in turn persuaded the Jungar Mongols to, because they're both Buddhist, to help them in overthrowing our state and establishing their power. So they became vassals of the Jungar. Then by the 1750s, the Junar themselves realized they made a mistake by allowing these Nakshandi Sufis, which are like, they were very extreme, to, you know, become the new rulers of East Turkistan. And so they in turn began to, you know, they're like, oh, we made a mistake. Let's remove them from power and give power back to the actual local people. And so this time the Naksha Bandi Sufis, they went to the Qing, the Manchus and invited Them invited their help and overthrew the jungles. And then this is how in 1759 the Manchu Qing Empire which had already conquered China in 1644 they took over East Turkestan. But again they ruled it as a military colony with no direct administration to where the Hojans continue to govern East Turkestan as vassals of the Qing Empire. But however, during that period our people organized 42 major uprisings against both the Hojas and the the Qing overlord and their Qing overlords. And in 1863, 1864 we were able to declare independence on with the liberation of Kashgar on November 12th of 1864 as the state of yet or the seven cities. And that referred to the seven major city states within East Pakistan that had united to come together and that lasted. Our brief independence lasted until 1877 when the Manchu Ching Empire again supported by the Russian Empire logistically and financially by the British, the British Shanghai Banking Corporation invaded and conquered East Turkistan once more. And then in 1884 to formally annex East Turkestan they coined the term Xinjiang and designated as Xinjiang Xinjiang in the Chinese language xin means new, Zhang means territory, also translates as frontier. The English Chinese Dictionary from 1893 translates Colony and colonize Xinjiang. So it also means the colony. Our people resisted again against the Qing Empire and held, you know, major uprisings in 1897, in 1905, 1912, 1907, but all of them were largely unsuccessful. In 1912 the Manchu Ching empire itself was overthrown by the Chinese Revolution known as the Shanghai Revolution. And East Turkestan was pretty much effectively governed under some parts of it were governed under remnants of, you know, the Qing Empire's warlords who became warlords. Some part of it was ruled by our own local Turk warlords. And then in 1931 the Kumultanate which was the last vestige of our own rule rule rule in East Turkistan. It was overthrown after the the prince died, the shock max with the king died. The Chinese warlord overthrew that and dissolved it and started actually bringing in China to facilitating Chinese colonization. And so this led to an armed uprising that launched in February of 1931. And by 1932 it spread out all across East Turkistan to where the different, you know, groups were all the same people, but you know, different localities. They all merged together and decided that, you know, we need to come together to create a modern independent state. And so on November 12, 1933 we declared independence as the first East Turkistan Republic. And unfortunately the Chinese. The Russian Soviet Union supported Chinese warlords in overthrowing our independent state because they feared that if we remained independent that this would instigate, you know, rebellions in West Turkestan and they would want to become independent too. I just want to clarify here the, the difference between East Turkestan and West Turkestan and Turkestan. So as I mentioned earlier, Turkestan was coined in like the 5th century, 5th, 6th century, referring to the Turkic Khagan age. The country of the Turks, Turkestan and the whole of Central Asia were all Turkic peoples were geographically labeled as Turkestan in all maps. And this changed. East Turkestan began to come about. The difference between east and West Turkestan. The first divide came in 1729, 1730, right after the Russian Empire began invading what is historically what is now, you know, decentralization republics, but historically the western part of Turkestan. So that's when Western scholars, Swedish military official and geography, he coined the term east versus West Turkestan because Western Turkestan was the portion of west of the and Palmir Mountains, the part that the Russians were trying to occupy. And east was east of that. So this is where that came. And by, gradually, by the, by the 1750s it became, you know, common. So this is where that term comes from. And even our language, for example, in the 19. Prior to 19, really 1930s, 19, mid-1940s, really our language was known as Eastern Turkey. Like those on this side, we spoke a language which is Eastern Turkic, but Eastern Turkey. And so in 1934, after the, in April of 1934, our first republic was overthrown. However, we continued to resist. And in 1937 we held a large scale armed uprising which liberated the southern half of our country. And we defeated the chat. We actually defeated the Chinese warlords to the point that because they were being defeated, the Soviet Union actually invaded East Turkestan because the, the Chinese puppet warlords were not doing an effective job in crushing our, our uprising. So the Soviet Union invaded and they killed about 100,000 of our people. Then there was a mass purge in where 300,000 of our people were arrested by the, the Chinese warlord that Soviets had put put in place Shang Se. And then from 1937 until 1943, you know, this is when the term Uyur began, became revitalized. And actually in 1921 the Soviet Union to differentiate the Turkic peoples inside East Turkestan from those under the control of the Soviet Union, they coined the term or they revived the term Uyghur So all of those Turkish people that were sedentary, meaning the non nomadic Turkish peoples, became. That was their designation. And those, you know, the, the nomadic ones, Kazakhs, Kyrgyz and so forth. And so this is when this term began, you know, becoming revived. Because prior to that, in historical text and even in our own, we just refer to ourselves as the Turks. That was, that was the case even when we declared independence in November of 1933. We called our country in the East Turkestan Republic. You know, we referred to our people as Turks. There was no mention of Uyghur. Uyghur only became more solidified under the Shanghai regime of the Soviet Union, the Soviet puppet regime. And by the 1940s, this is when Uyghur's the term Uyghur is becoming, you know, more, more common. So in 1943, the Chinese puppet warlord Ching Se, he actually switches, in 1942, he switches his allegiance from the Soviet Union to the Republic of China, actualist China. The reason he does that is because Hitler launched Operation Barbosa and the Soviet Union was being, you know, suffering, you know, losses to the, to the Nazis, and they weren't paying attention as much. And our people, you know, we were still periodically, you know, resisting. And so Shang say, thought to control his, you know, to ensure his regime, he needed another power, bigger power to help him do that. And Soviet Union was not, you know, it's fighting literally to survive against Hitler. So it didn't pay attention. So he in turn turned to the Chinese regime, the Republic of China, and gave allegiance to them. And they began sending troops to, you know, occupy Turkistan. And then in 1943, by 1943, Hitler is, you know, Stalin is winning against, you know, the, the Nazis. And at the same time, our people are, you know, slowly engaging in protests, small scale clashes against the Chinese military forces at the time. So Stalin took advantage of that and decided, oh, let me support their uprising. So the Soviet Union ended up supporting our uprising in 1944. And in November 12, November 7 of 1944, we liberated Hulja, which is right across the Kazakhstan. And four days later, they declared the East Turkistan the Second Easter Common, now known as the Second East Turkestan Republic. But the East Turkistan Republic. And we maintained our independence. And we quickly began, you know, liberating large parts of East Turkestan until the Soviet Union forced us into a ceasefire agreement with the Chinese nationalists in 19. In September of 1945. By then, we had liberated a quarter of our country. But the Chinese, you Know, fear that if, since they can defeat us militarily, because China is also involved in, you know, fighting its own civil war and fighting against Japan. So it didn't have, you know, it didn't believe that it could defeat us militarily. So it began to propagate, you know, use agents among its own, agents from our, our people to propagate autonomy under Chinese rule in opposition to independence and demonizing our own independent government which had already liberated, you know, a quarter of our country. As, you know, Communists, even though they weren't Communists, we just got support from the Soviet Union because, and it's not like the Soviet Union gave that support to us for free. We paid for every weapon that we got from the Soviet Union. We paid it in gold. In fact, Stalin geopolitical calculation wasn't just to support our independence. It was to use us as a leverage against China. One, to get access to our uranium mines because we had a larger, large amounts of uranium. And the Soviet Union was covertly developing its nuclear program or its atomic bomb program. And secondly, to pressure the Republic of China to recognize Outer Mongolia's independence. Because Soviet Union out of Mongolia or Mongolia today, would served as a buffer between China and the Soviet Union. And so Stalin was worried that if, you know, Outer Mongolia's independence wasn't guaranteed, if, you know, the US and others supported China and they took over Mongolia, this would put a large border between the Soviet Union and China, which would, you know, be potentially destabilizing for the Soviet Union. So Stalin use the East Turkestan Republic to pressure the, the Chinese to the Republic of China to where the Republic of China was like, okay, stop supporting, you know, the East Turkestan Republic and I will recognize our Mongolia's independence. And that was the agreement that they came to. Then they forced us into a ceasefire agreement with the, the Republic of China in 1946. The ROC promised us that they would give us autonomy again. They use their agents to propagate autonomy in opposition to independence in order to control East Turkistan. And like, we'll give you autonomy, we'll give you rights, we'll withdraw our troops, we'll end colonization. We won't, you know, since Chinese settlers. And so our president, who opposed it, he, he was against it. He, he was kidnapped by Soviet agents and he later died in house arrest in 1976 in Tashkent. Then in his place, the Soviets, you know, put our foreign minister, who is actually a, you know, Soviet agent, and he initially agreed to the Chinese terms because that's what His Soviet, you know, handlers pressed him to. And he thought he was very young, too. He was, like, 30 years old. So he's my age. He made a very bad mistake out of his youth. And we ended up signing a peace agreement where we were going to have, you know, autonomy and where, you know, would be responsible for all of our internal affairs. And then in 1947, when China was drafting its constitution, our leadership of the East Pakistan Republic went to or including our foreign minister, went to Nanjing. And they're like, okay, per that agreement, you know, you're not upholding the agreement. You're still bringing Chinese soldiers into my country. You. What the heck is this? We want you to guarantee in your constitution that we have autonomy. We want you to mention that in your constitution, and we want you to stop calling us Shinjam, because that's the colonial term. We're not a new territory. Refer to us as East Turkistan, even as an autonomous region under that, we'll accept that and check. Refused. So when Jan K. Refused, he returned back to East Turkistan, and he's like, we're done with this, you know, coalition government thing. Autonomy under China. We're done with that. They're not going to uphold it. We're going to continue fighting for our independence. Then in 1949, the Chinese Civil war is coming towards an end where Mao is gaining over the Chinese Nationalists. And Stalin decides that, you know, let me just wrap up East Turkistan and give them away to China to. To Mao. And in fact, Mao didn't have any intention to invade East Turkestan or occupy East Turkistan immediately. His intention was take over Tibet and then go into East Turkestan in, like, 1952, 53. But Stalin was like, no, you need to take East Turkestan first because they share a border with us in British India. And the British, even though India is still India was already independent at that time. The British will use India and Pakistan to support them, and they will, in turn create problems for both the Soviet Union and China. So take over East Turkestan first and quickly occupy it. And so in order to facilitate the occupation, Stalin called all of our leadership and their top staff, 14 officials, including our foreign minister, interior minister, chief of Staff, Defense Minister to Almaty for a meeting. And then they were executed there. And then a plane crash was staged in August 27th of 1949. And the official narrative is that they died in a plane crash. However, in 1990, it was after 1992, after the Soviet Union fell, the. The NKVD, which is the Soviet intelligence at the time, the predecessor of the kgb, one of their, the guy who was responsible for carrying out the assassinations and for, you know, responsible for overseeing the NKVD in Central Asia. Pavel through the Plato, he wrote his memoir called Special Tasks and in it, in his book he highlights how the leaders of the East Turkestan Republic were called to almighty and they were pressed to join Mao and his prc, to join the Chinese Communists and to dissolve the East Turkestan Republic. And after they refused, they were tortured for three days hoping to they would change their minds. And after they refused, they were executed. And then the whole plane crash narrative was staged to, you know, to cover it up. So this was in August of 1949. Recently declassified CIA documents declassified in 2014 also highlights that the Soviet intelligence killed a further 30 senior political and military officials of the East Turkestan Republic to prevent a effective resistance because we still had a 50 to 60,000 man army and we wouldn't fight if, if we had an effective leadership. So on October 1, 1949, Mao declares the People's Republic of China. Eleven days later, on October 12, 1949, they started invading East Circus. Then two months later, on December 22, 1949, they overthrew the independent East Turkistan Republic, effectively initiating, you know, Chinese occupation. And then in 1955, China designates east Turkestan as the so called Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, stating that, you know, instead of independence, we're going to give you Autonomy. However, in 1956, actually our leaders include former leaders of the East Pakistan Republic who were incorporated as, you know, the chairman, vice chairman, etc of the so called autonomous region. They rejected the autonomy. In fact, it was in December 22 that they opposed it. In memory of that occupation, they're like, no, we don't want autonomy. We want, you know, our independence. We want an independent East Turkestan Republic back. We're done with Chinese, you know, autonomy. All this because they never held up any of this because they kept bringing in more and more Chinese colonists, more and more Chinese troops or anyone. Our people who protested against this were being killed. And even our puppet leaders of the autonomous region were, you know, very helpless. So even they realized, you know, this autonomy thing is not going to work out. And so over the years, China began to colonize East Turkistan. So in 1949, this is the key fact that we need to highlight is that when China occupied East Turkestan, when the People's Republic of China occupied East Turkestan, the Chinese population did not even make up 2 to 3%. And that 2 to 3% was the 200,000 Chinese troops and the civil servants that the Chinese government had sent to, you know, administer and occupy East Turkistan. Whereas the Uyghurs made up over 90% of the population. Combined with the other ethnic groups, Turkic ethnic groups, we were well over 96% of the population population and gradually over the past 76 years of colonization, massacres, genocide, our population, you know, demographics have been severely altered to where we would. If we take the Chinese government's official census, which always downplays our true numbers, if we take it to, you know, seriously, they state that we're about 45% Uyghurs alone. And then with the other Turkic ethnic groups were combined about 57, 58% where the Chinese have risen from less than 2 to 3% to over 41, 42% as of 2020.
- [104:09]
B
From what you've told, it seems like the East Pakistan is at the intersection of China and Russia's inflow influence throughout the history and up till the current time. And in relating to Myanmar, Myanmar is also pulling between the superpower countries of China and Russia's influence. On top of it, US policy regarding to Myanmar also shifts based on the wind of how China will respond to it. And going back to, you know, like what's in your story about telling about East Turkistan and the politics of it, the China's role is important. And I want to go back to one of the points that you made about the Belt and Road Initiative that China is doing in terms of economic relations. Myanmar is an important partner to China in jointly building the Belt and Road Initiative BRI and one of the key components of BRI being like China Myanmar Economic Corridor cmec. So CMEC starts from China's Yunnan Province and it ends in Myanmar's western coast of Jiaofiu. So BRI started in 2013 and it consists of ports, rails, roads across over 150 countries. But now from 2024 to 2025 I want to highlight that the new phase of BRI shifts towards Central Asia and resource backed project. So for East Turkistan region I imagine it would be steel industry and what other resources is there? And then also what is China's BRI impact on the region and also specifically for the people of East Turkestan.
- [106:07]
A
So East Turkestan is literally the cornerstone of China's Belt and Road Initiative. I'll give you for example the scale of East Turkestan. So East Turkestan is 1,828 418 square kilometers. So it's a massive country in terms of land size, land area and that's roughly about a one fifth of the total areas of the People's Republic of China under the control of the People's
- [106:40]
B
Republic of China from compared to like American state.
- [106:47]
A
Okay, so it's about almost three times the size of the U. S. State of Texas.
- [106:55]
B
That's a massive land.
- [106:57]
A
Yeah, so it's, it's, it's very huge in terms of size. It's even in the so called prc. The so called Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region is the largest administrative body in, in the prc. So it's, it's, it's very huge in terms of size. So that's one issue. Secondly, East Turkestan is the energy base for China. And I'm not talking just about, you know, oil and natural gas, we're talking about electricity as well. So about 60% of China's 40 to 60% of China's coal reserves comes from East Turkestan. About 35% of their oil and natural gas reserves is in East Turkestan. About 15% of minerals, 15 to 20% of minerals and critical minerals comes from East Turkistan. The electricity from East Turkestan powers over hundreds of Chinese cities in 20 different Chinese provinces. The oil, the natural gas from East Turkistan powers 120 Chinese cities in 20 different Chinese provinces. So from that perspective it's very crucial energy base for China. That's why if you remember in 2009 the, the daisu, he said, he was saying if the US were to do this, they would cut off our west to east pipelines and energy grids. That was the east pipelines is the oil and natural gas pipelines and the electricity grids that supply, you know, energy to China and China would not be able to sustain it today. In recent years, especially with the belt and road, but also with preparations for again China's trying to prepare for war. China has been expanding nuclear missile silos in East Turkistan away from, you know, the coastal areas to where if the, you know, if the US or others were to launch, you know, ballistic missile attacks, it would be quote, safe. Historically, China tested its nuclear weapons in East Turkestan. So from 1964 to 1996, China conducted 45 nuclear tests in East Turkestan which killed an estimated 750,000 to a million people peoples in East Turkestan, leaving millions of our people with birth defects and radiation and so forth. So that's another aspect of that also right now we're in the AI AI era. So everyone is trying to create, you know, the best AI systems and they're expanding AI data data centers. Guess where those AI data centers are, are being built in, in East Turkistan, in the deserts of East Turkistan. 70%. China's aim is by 2030 to have 70% of their AI data centers in East Turkestan alone again in the event of war. Because AI data centers are, are necessary to run, you know, entire government nowadays, entire societies, economic, from economics to, you know, security to, you know, health etc. So China wants to keep it as far insulated as possible from any, you know, coastal attack that it anticipates will happen if it invades Taiwan. So that's why it's placing in East Turkistan. East Turkistan literally as I stated, is the only all, you know, land based route that would connect China to Central Asia, South Asia and into the Middle east and ultimately into Europe. Without East Turkestan, China would lose all that connection. That's why even, you know, even in like China's so focused on Central Asia nowadays compared to, you know, Southeast Asia is because more and more, as you stated earlier, even Thailand, you know, some of its policies are being, you know, it's, you know, it's geopolitical considerations are being shaped by external power players like even the United States. So it's like who, whose side will I choose? Because it has to choose a side. Like in great power politics, small nations like us, we always have to choose one side or the other. We can't sit on both boats. At the end of the day we have to choose one, one that benefits our interest the most. And I guess so China recognizes that, you know, China recognized that it can't truly, you know, ensure that Thailand will be loyal to China's interests in the event of war. So China's like, okay, I gotta find another, you know, a better, much safer alternative. So it's heavily investing into Central Asia and trying to, you know, buy off those governments. And the US is, you know, kind of pushing back, but not as, not as much as it should be actually. So this is the consideration. If China loses East Turkestan, then its empire crumbles. Like forget about just the Belt Road. The Belt and Road initiative will crumble instantly. But it's overall empire, its occupation of, of Tibet, of Southern Mongolia will crumble as well and it'll be reduced to what it truly is, China, which is inside the Great Wall.
- [113:00]
B
So that's a lot at stake for China to hold on to the region of East Turkistan.
- [113:05]
A
Yes. And that's why for them, they are essentially undertaking a final solution to the East Turkistan problem. For them, regardless, it doesn't matter if, if we are like, okay, we accept your autonomy, you know, which we already did, you know, which we quote already did. Since 1955, we've been autonomous for the past 70 years. What has that brought us? At the end of the day, their complete objective is to completely wipe us out, to ensure that we don't exist. Because the fact that we exist, they fear that one day or another we could potentially rise up and push back. And so that's their fears because they know if you look at history, at every opportunity we had over the past 100 years, every opportunity that we, that was available, we took that to liberate our country, that opportunity to liberate our country and restore our independence. And so that's what China fears. And as I mentioned, East Turkistan is crucial not just for the war in the Indo Pacific over Taiwan, but also crucial for China's future plans to expand deeper into Central Asia, to expand into even Siberia. So if you look, if you Google, there's a map that, if you Google this called the 1936 National Map of Chain of Shame of China, that itself shows China's ambitions, China's goal. So China under the Republic of China, they initiated this, they created this map in 1936, claiming that this was historical territories of China that China lost because of foreign imperialists, etc. It has no historical basis whatsoever because none of it is fact. But it's just to indoctrinate their future generations to, you know, facilitate this expansionist ideology. So if you look at that map, it claims even Thailand, Myanmar, large parts of, you know, even Vietnam as part of China. It claims half of Central Asia as part of China. It claims half of Afghanistan, half of India as part of China, it claims half of Siberia as part of China. And so this is what they've been indoctrinating them in. And Chinese military strategists, if you look at their, if you ever pay attention to their rhetoric and their defense, you know, like these lectures that they give, they highlighted that there is going to, they're going to fight five major wars in the next 50 years. The first one is they said is going to be taking over Taiwan. After they do that, then they're going to either turn to Central Asia and take to Central Asia and then they're going to take the independent state of Mongolia and Siberia. Then they're going to expand and, you know, try into Deeper into South Asia and Southeast Asia. So this is their objectives. They're, they're, they're not like hiding it, you know, normally you would hide it, but they, they propagate this because one, right now it just seems, oh, it's propaganda to add pressure to those countries, but in reality it's propaganda to indoctrinate their future generations. This is what we are preparing you for. And even if you look at the Belt Road initiative, especially because it stretches as far as Africa and Latin America, like even in Thailand, who are the people that are working? It's not the Thai people that are building these railways, that are building these ports, who are building it, they're bringing it in. Chinese males. Chinese males. Because China has the population crisis it's facing. There's not enough females versus males. So they're going to decline. So what, what are they doing? They're offsetting this by, you know, exporting all their, you know, male workers. Even in Africa, even I remember watching a, a lecture by a African scholar and he was warning about how the future of, you know, Chinese neocolonialism in Africa. And he's saying right now, you see, you know, there's 300,000 Chinese workers in just this country, I forgot the name of the country alone. And all of them are male. It's not that, you know, the Chinese are claiming that, oh, we're here to help build you roads, railways, hospitals, all these different good things. And yes, they're doing that, but who is benefiting from it? We're not. We have a lot of people that could use those jobs. You know, if, if they sent the Chinese as technical experts, that would have been acceptable, but it's the Chinese that are doing everything. And our own people, we're not getting those jobs. Our men are not getting those jobs. So what's happening? You're already seeing this. Our women are marrying the Chinese men and they're having babies and they're. And in our country they're setting up little many colonies inside cities, their own entire gated, walled off neighborhoods where it's just strictly those Chinese and you know, the local women that married the Chinese and they're building their schools, they're doing all these things. Those children are then being sent off to Beijing to get even more, you know, to China to even receive a higher education. And then they're going to come back to our country. And in 30, 40 years, he said, right now you might not believe it, but in 30, 40 years, our ministers of our government, our parliament members, hell even our president Might be a half Chinese and then you, it'll be too late. And then you will understand what, what we are worrying about. Because this is the sad reality. He said this is much more notorious than the form of colonialism that the Europeans did. At least, you know, at the end of the day we would be able to differentiate them, be like, oh, they're not us, but then here, you know, they're going to be like we're part of you. On the surface they're going to be half us, but in reality their hearts are going to be loyal to Beijing. And this is the problem that he was worrying about. And it's not just happening in, in those African countries, this is happening in other countries as well. Because one, this happened in our own country as well. Like many of the, the, the so called, you know, the, the puppet leaders that China portrays and says, oh, these are rulers, are happy living under China. You know, those who want independence, they're separatists, they're terrorists, etc, those that they portray, it's either those half Uyghurs, half Chinese, those that, you know, that are loyal to Beijing, or it's fully Chinese. Because nowadays they're dressing up Chinese people because in the Western media for the longest time they portrayed us as Chinese Muslims even though we're not Chinese in any way. We don't have any cultural, religious, linguistic or even, you know, even not sense of racial similarity to the Chinese, biological similarity. But because the Western media has propagated this narrative, you know, because of foolishness and because this is why we oppose both the term Xinjiang and both oppose being called Chinese Muslim is because everyone thinks, oh, this is China is doing this in their own country. This is, this is, you know, China is doing this to their own people. It's not about religion because if, if we were being targeted because we were Muslim, there's 15 million actual Chinese Muslims who are actually Chinese and who are Muslims. But they're not being targeted. It's because of over our country and our land and our resources. They don't want the people, they want that land and the resources and the people there. Us, we are obstacles. This is why they're killing us. And to the Western, you know, influencers over the past two, three years they've been bringing a lot, especially after a lot of condemnation by the international community. They've been bringing a lot of influencers taking them on, you know, tours, tours, saying oh, look at these happy dancing and dancing Uyghurs. 90% of those Uyghurs are not even Uyghurs they're Chinese dressed up, you know, because they, they wear a doppa like mine on my head. They wear our traditional clothing and they just know how to say the Chinese teach them a few things in our language. And then to the thing they say, oh yeah, we're the happy Uyghurs. It's all lies. There's no genocide happening here. That's Western propaganda. And to them, to those people who don't know, who's never actually seen a real Uyghur, to them, those people just wearing that hat and looking Chinese, oh, this is the wehr. When in reality we don't have, you know, even like a racial or biological similarity with them. And this is the, this is part of the problem because if we start using the term Xinjiang, which China has normalized in, in the past two decades prior to that, you'd still see mention of East Turkistan, but China normalized it through, you know, its own proxies, etc. And then to create this narrative that this is the Chinese territory, this is, you know, this is happening to the Chinese people, these are Chinese Muslims, that they're, this is China's internal affairs. To deny our right to self determination, to deny the fact that it's a colonial power, because China is a colonial power. And that's, that's the root of it. The name Xinjiang itself shows that it's, it's new to China, but it's not new to the people that even their own. And this is genetic and DNA testing not carried out by us or the west, but the Chinese themselves who found that. Oh, we've been there since the time of the Ice Age.
- [123:35]
B
Yeah. You mentioned the new way of colonialism and the media's portrayal of how weaker people are versus the reality of it. I noticed that the United States State Department has put out travel advisory to travel to East Pakistan. Can they travel? Can people travel now? Can American travel now? And you said they invited or China invited influencers to go view. Are people being able to go in and out of the region right now? And the. I want to revisit the topic. Topic of re, quote, unquote, re education camps and concentration camps. You mentioned it. What are the situations of those right now? And you know, we, you don't usually see that much of those news in mainstream United States media anymore. So if you could shine a light on how things are doing there.
- [124:30]
A
Yes. So I mean, China says that you can come and visit it. You know, it's in past, like I said, the past two years, they've been engaging in a lot of propaganda campaign trying to invite people to come and visit, you know, and go on these tours. But of course they only take you to two places and you cannot go anywhere beyond that. Everywhere else is unrestricted. The two places, one, Urumqi, which is the de facto capital right now or the, yeah, the de facto capital right now of the so called autonomous region of East Turkistan. And it's, it's largely a Chinese city. The, the Chinese have heavily colonized it to where the Chinese make up over 75% of the population. We would maybe make up 15, 20% if, if even so it's largely Chinese. There's only, even in that area, they only take you to one area, which is an international bazaar. That is what they want to showcase you is the international bazaar like a 1km area. And they're, you know, it's like a tourist site. They have, you know, craft arts and crafts, music, dancing. And again, this is where they showcase the, the Chinese dressed up as Uyghurs and they're singing and dancing. And so when the Western people come and they, you know, try to talk to them, they say a few things and they're like, oh no, that's all a lie. Everything is fine here. Except the Western person can't tell this is not an Uyghur, can't tell a true between a Chinese dressed up as an Uyghur. So they believe it. And then another place they take them is to the Kashkar city, which is the cultural capital of East Turkestan. And even there, the New City, they've expelled pretty much all of the Uyghurs. They've put up confines. So you can't go from New City into the Old City without special permission. So there again, it's the same thing. Chinese dressed up as, with some mixed in among them and then singing and dancing, the same thing. And this is it. There is no camps. Can you see the camps? When in reality the camps are on the outskirts in the deserts, in, in the other places. And the same thing the Chinese are trying to do is they're trying to, to pressure people from our diaspora, our global diaspora to come back saying, we will give you, you know, because it's been seven, eight years, 10 years, 11 years since you, you even heard from your relative to see if they're alive or dead, you know, and they said, oh, we will allow you to visit, you know, but in exchange for this. So when you come visit, after you visit, you have to go and state that everything is back to normal, that, you know, it's developed betterly, everyone is safe, nothing is bad is happening. Oh, it's just the terrorists that were affected. And then you have to spy on the organizations and leaders in those countries. You have to call out, you know, you have to, to fight them, you have to attack them. So on social media you might see, you'll be like, oh, but your own people, some of your own people are against you. You might see them. This is precisely why, because this is part of their job. This is why they're allowed to go back and, and, and, and, and do this. And it's to essentially claim, you know, to help China put up this narrative that, see, we are not committing genocide. See, this is all just, you know, propaganda being created by separatists and outside forces. This is the propaganda that the Chinese government uses. And when it comes to the concentration camps, so, or the so called re education camps, leaked in 2019, the New York Times, they published the leaked internal documents of over 450 pages of leaked internal Chinese government documents, including Xi Jinping's notorious speech to absolutely no show no mercy, including their shoot to kill policies, including their, you know, you have to arrest a third of them, enslave a third of them, wipe out a third of them. All of this China's own, you know, satellite imagery, you can see the concentration camps. China calls these re education centers. What kind of re education center or school has high barbed wire fences, double triple layers in some, some cases with guard towers, with, you know, with no one being able to go even near it. Why does it look like a massive prison complex? What kind of school is that? And there's 1400 of them. Not, not just like, you know, 20 or 30 or a hundred. There's 1400, 1400. The Chinese government itself, in its 2020, September 2020 white paper, admitted that they sent 1.29 million people per year to re education and vocational training in these camps. That's over 7.8 million people between 2014 and 2019 that have been interned. And then it claimed that many of them graduated and found jobs. Found jobs. So this is, you know, they graduated. So where they graduate to, they graduate to forced labor, forced labor camps where they became slaves, essentially. And the Chinese government itself claims that, oh, we're facing labor shortages in East Turkestan. There's not enough labor. We have to modernize and develop this area. So they bring in millions of Chinese colonists to develop it. At the same time, they're like, oh, there's surplus labor here that we have to relocate the Uyghurs out of their country into Chinese provinces to work as slave labor. This is the reality. Like just ask the Chinese government, why are you doing this? Wouldn't it be better to leave the Uyghur there and let them use them to develop, you know, the area and let the, you know, the Chinese, whoever you apparently have labor shortages in China, let them remain there and work there. Wouldn't that be the most logical thing to do? Because in reality it's not about that. It's just, it's, it's not that there's a shortage or there's a surplus. It's just a deliberate campaign. So what is happening?
- [131:34]
B
The show of power. They try to control the region and the people.
- [131:39]
A
Yeah. So let's say the China claims it's fighting against terrorism, that it's fighting against terrorism and extremism. When you have 7.8 million people that you classify as terrorists, that's not terrorism. You're the one engaging in terrorism. If there's, if there's 7.8 million people that you believe are terrorists and there's, there's a, this is not a so called terrorism problem. This is a problem of your authoritarianism, of your, of another thing, which is colonialism. Like, no, like China claims, oh, we're developing and modernizing it, or the Uyghurs, you know, we're not engaging in genocide. Their population grow. We help them. Our population went from over 96% in 1949 to, if we take what the Chinese government says to less than 45% or the Chinese grew from 2 to 3% to over 40, 41, 42% as of 2020. That is you, you have, you won't find in any history, throughout human history that rapid of a colonization over 70 years, 76 years. You won't find it. Over 70 years. You won't find out that scale of colonization in any part of the world. The Chinese government claims that, you know, to, to hide the fact that they're, you know, they don't, they don't deny the fact that they're sterilizing our women. They don't deny it. You know, they Prevent, they've sterilized 300,000 of our women to prevent them from having babies. And when asked, this is what the US, The Chinese embassy here in the United States stated, oh, we're liberating these Uyghur women from becoming baby making machines. This is their defense. We're liberating them from becoming baby making machines. Why don't you liberate your own women from baby becoming baby making machines instead of targeting the Uyghur. You, you, there's, there's already a billion of you. Why don't you liberate them? You say don't even number 12 million. In reality we're over, you know, 40, 40 million. Why don't you liberate them? So this is, this is, they're just a, you know, genocidal policy like they expose themselves. If you look at the, the fact that they're like, oh, we're not killing Uyghurs. Well, your own government admitted that you, you killed nearly. You, you, you killed 3.7 million babies in East Turkestan between 1989-2009 as part of the one child family policy, etc. They forcibly prevented, this is the use date. They used it, they prevented the birth, the illegal births of 3.7 million ethnic minorities in so called, you know, Xqar in East Turkestan. 3.7 million babies after 2009. We estimate another, you know, at least another 3, 400,000. Over 4 million of our babies have been killed by the Chinese government, which they admit to. At least 3.7 million of them they admit to killing. Yet, you know, there's no genocide happening. Look, let's look at the organ harvesting industry. The organ harvesting industry, China, prior to 2014, its own official data, the Chinese government's own official data, they stated that there were about 5 to 6,000 organ transplants per year. Who, which came from prisoners who voluntarily gave their organs again, mostly again voluntarily gave their organs like prisoners would voluntarily give their organs. But let's, let's take that into that then. As soon as the mass internment starts in 2000, by the end of 2014, it skyrockets to over 50,000, 50,000 voluntary organ transplants. There's no way that it goes from 5,6000 in the year before to over 50,000, you know, just rapidly to where now it's believed to be at least 100,000 a year. And where are those organs coming from? Why are you building those crematoriums? Why are you building crematoriums in a Muslim majority region which bury their dead? If you're not killing people, if you're not killing people, if people are not dying in the camps, why is it that you're not allowing any independent monitor to actually go visit these camps? Why, why do you keep continuing to deny it even in 2025? Why is it when we look at satellite imagery, despite the fact that, you know, even in December 2025, despite the fact that you claim that most of these camps have been shut down, the schools have been shut down. Why is it that some of them have expanded three, four times the site and are still operating in December 2025? This is, this is all questions that journalists, true journalists, need to ask the Chinese government. Like you're saying one thing, but it's not matching up here. Like the facts are saying the other thing. Like for example, China itself actively at the UN international community, especially over the plight of, you know, the Palestinians. What does it always say? It shows itself as a defender, as like of the Palestinians as a defender of self determination. It even, you know, actively state that it supports the Palestinian people's right to govern themselves, Palestinian statehood and that Palestine should be governed by Palestinians and that, you know, China opposes colonialism and imperialism, yet it engages in colonialism and imperialism in East Turkestan, in Tibet. Why is it that they don't have those rights? If we look at, you know, if we compare what's happening there versus what's happening there, you know, it's, it's far, what you're doing is far more, what China is doing is far more worse, Far more worse. Why is it that people can't even, you know, pray to even utter the name God? You know, because this is one of the, it's not conspiracies. This is, you know, your own government posters that you put up all across propaganda posters that you put up all across East Turkestan warning people, it's the Communist Party that gives you food, not God. Stop praying to God. There is no God. The, the party is greater than your God. You're putting this all over. If you, your own government put out. This is the type of reasons you could have that you are potentially extremist and must be re educated. If you have these, these problems. If you believe in God, if you ever traveled anywhere outside the country, if you have contact with anyone overseas, meaning if you have any relatives overseas, if you're a young man and you have a beard, you're an extremist. If you are a young man and you know, if you refuse to drink alcohol, if you refuse to smoke, if you refuse to eat pork, because again, all these three things is against our religion. Technically you're not allowed to do that. You're an extremist. If you have workout equipment at your home, you're a terrorist. Because why else would you work out? You're not working out to look good for yourself or improve your health or look good for, you know, to attractive for the ladies you're working out because you want to rebel against the Chinese state. These are all actual official reasons why for you to be sent to a camp. This is not stuff that we're making up. This is stuff that's publicly out there that the Chinese government itself put out there. And yet you want, they claim that, oh, we're just re educating them. Okay, if they were re educating them, why is it that billionaires are billionaires? Oh, we're providing them with job opportunities. You arrested all the billionaires in the country and you sentenced them from anywhere from 18 to life in prison. All the Uyghur billionaires. You took all their wealth. Those billionaires have more money than you could ever, than anyone could that they could ever have working a million years for your in your slave labor factories. Doctors, scholars, people with, you know, PhDs. All of them, all of our intellectuals, imprisoned. Oh, they were all extremists. Even officials that worked for the Chinese state, even the, the collaborators, those who collaborated with them, who worked to oppress our people, who worked to maintain Chinese rule. Even many of them were imprisoned. Why? Because they're two faced, they're two, they're two faced officials. They're conspiring with, you know, overseas, you know, counter revolutionary forces. This is the type of crap that they do. If, and their own statement, for example, let's look at their judicial data. So China's own judicial data shows that they have about 1.5 million prisoners, people who are officially imprisoned, facing anywhere from zero, you know, one year in prison to life in prison. One and a half million people and the whole of the PRC. Yet out of that, over 33% of those prisoners, 578,500 of them are Uyghurs and other Turkic peoples. Despite the fact that we don't make, you know, East Turkestan's population, our population doesn't make even 2% of the population. Of all the areas under the PRC, we have over 33% of their prison population. Explain that. How is that not racism? How is that not, you know, genocidal? Explain how why you need to take a million. This is the Chinese government. How is it legal for you to take a million children, reward another Turkish children from their families and put them into so called orphanages and boarding schools, which if you look at the satellite imagery again of it's just like miniature concentration camps again. Barbed wire fencing, at least one watchtower, security forces around it preventing anyone from going or entering. And you have Chinese government itself propagating these videos of where Our children. And we're not Talking about like 10, 12 year old children, we're talking about PE children that are as young as 2, 3 years old toddlers who barely know anything, who are being dressed up in Chinese military uniforms style uniforms, instructed by Chinese military officials and officers to, you know, shout propaganda like, we are the future soldiers of China. We will, you know, fight and defend China against its enemies. All these types of things. What, why are you doing that? How is that not genocide? Everything that you're doing that China is doing in East Turkistan is genocide. All of China's lies. You know, if you actually go to the ground and you ask, you know, like, get away from their little propaganda, you know, punta can tour sites and actually go across the country. If you look at the satellite imagery still available on Google Earth, why is it, why, why is it still operating in December 2025? You claim these are. We're closed. You claim this, the Chinese government claimed this in 2020, that it was closed. Why is it still operating five years later? Why is it that, you know, the Uyghur population is decreasing severely and the Chinese population is increasing? All of this, you know, the answer is very clear why China is doing it. But of course, Chinese government is going to, you know, they're not even trying to deny it anymore. Actually, this, earlier this year, there's a Chinese, There's a entity called the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. So it's the Chinese Communist parties and the Chinese government's official think tank. Like, I don't know how you, it would compare in the US like the, the closest thing you could compare it to is like Durant Corporation, kind of like even that is, you know, off. But let's try to compare it to that. This is the official think tank. So they have a unit focused on, you know, Chinese Communist Party history and glorification. So in that, this unit, the China, one of the units, they published a article earlier in February of 2025 stating Easter. The title of the article, East Turkestan, West Turkistan, just tutu them all. Tutu is the Chinese slang term for machine gun them down. That is the title of the article and in it is saying, you know, we're, you know, we're not doing enough. Like we should, we should just machine gun these people down. Why are we wasting our time trying to go through all this hassle, you know, and they give the example of the initial Chinese general that they had sent to conquer East Turkistan back in 1949, 1950, Wong Jin, and he said, and they were saying Wong Jin used to do this. If it. Under Wangjin's time, there was no resistance because he implemented. He used terror to fight these savages, these barbarians. This is the term they used. He used terror to fight them. If any village resisted, he would bombard the entire town and wipe them all out. This is the term. If there were three Uyghur, three or more Uyghur men gathered in one place, he would have them executed on spot. To where they wouldn't even dare to come together in one place. If their leaders of the so called, you know, if their leaders complained to Beijing and said, you know, we're not, we're not happy with you, you know, you're not keeping the promises that you pro. The promises that you made to us. He, he would just take them to the desert and execute them on spot. He would force, you know, he would. He destroyed their mosque and he would force all these Uyghurs to raise pigs and then not only to raise those pigs, but to eat them at gunpoint. And if they refused, he'd kill them. This is what we need to do. This is the solution that we should undertake is we should follow Wang Xing's example. We should just tutor them all. We should just machine gun them all. This is the leaf level of, what do you call it, inhumaneness, the level of barbaric that the Chinese government is. This is their intention. Like you have their extremists in their government who are saying, you know, we're being too merciful, even this. Instead of trying to sterilize them, instead of trying to separate their children, instead of trying to just harvest their organs, we just need to machine gun them all and resolve this problem. This is, this is something, you know, if this came from some random Chinese, you know, nationalist or extremist on social media, you'd be like, okay, all right, whatever. But the fact that this is coming from a think tank that is provides policy guidance and recommendations to the Chinese government and this is happening in 2025, this shows that the genocide is far from over.
- [148:30]
B
When the facts of the Chinese doing are apparent, the Human Rights Watch organization says the evidence shows that the Chinese government has committed and continues to commit crimes against humanity against the Turkic Muslim population. If that fact is known, why is it so difficult to name recognize it as genocide? And what about the international population and community? Why is it hard for people outside of the East Turkestan community to pinpoint and say that China is at fault for doing that? Because I know that in 2020. The ICC prosecutor rejected Uyghur genocide complaint against China because China is not a signatory to the icc. So what are the roadblocks that you face in trying to claim or name as genocide? And how important is it that the term genocide and recognition matter in your work?
- [149:39]
A
Well, we actually got the genocide recognized. The US government, for example, since January 19, 2021 recognizes as genocide and crimes against humanity as an ongoing genocide and crimes against humanity. They re reaffirmed this in their latest report a couple of months back as well. We have the recognition that it's a genocide by over a dozen Western parliaments. We have even the UN described it crimes against humanity. It didn't use the term genocide because again, a lot of Chinese pressure. Despite that, they're not doing anything. Even the U.S. yes, they recognized it, they condemned it, but condemnation and recognition alone doesn't stop a genocide. Unfortunately it doesn't. And when you're not addressing the root of the problem and you're just addressing symptoms, you know, it's like putting out on a band aid on, on something, you know, on, on a wound that needs to be, you know, surgically operated on or it's like taking a painkiller for, you know, like a, taking like Tylenol for, you know, you know, like, for like a brain tumor or something that you have, you know, it's, it doesn't do anything other than, you know, temporarily pretend to numb the pain or something, you know, but it doesn't underline, address the real issue of the problem. The real issue of the problem is Chinese colonization and occupation of East Turkestan. And that is when this genocide actually started. It's not something that just happened in 2014. Even under Wangen, even in the initial years, hundreds of thousands of our people were brutally massacred in a, in very barbaric faction that The Chinese in 2025 are saying we need to go back to doing that because in, because potentially millions of our people were massacred. Because what's odd is in 1949, in December, after Ma took over East Turkistan, in his letter to Stalin, he writes, there were 9 million Turkish peoples here in East Turkestan. 9 million. Then in 1953, China's like, oh no, there's actually only 4, 4 to 5 million of them. So half of our population just disappeared within five years. Right. One, they engaged in mass massacres, genocidal massacres, campaigns, bombarding entire villages, towns, executing. The Chinese government itself admits to executing 150000 so called enemies of China and counter Revolutionaries who resisted the PLA between 1949 and 1954. It's an established fact. They've long admitted that they made that admission in a radio broadcast and News broadcast in 1954, in March of 1954. So all of this is happening, but no one is addressing the roots, no one is addressing real solutions for the problem because condemnation alone is not going to, is not going to stop a genocide. Calling, calling it and recognizing as genocide is not going to stop it. Under the UN Genocide Convention, all governments have the responsibility to prevent and punish the crime of genocide. So you have to punish those who are committing genocide. So how do you do that one? You need to, you know, actually hold genocidal leaders accountable. You need to bring them bring before international tribunals, international courts like the International Criminal Court. The International Court of Justice needs to highlight the fact that our right to self determination has been denied systematically for the past 76 years, that we are an occupied country. That China is not just engaging in genocide and crimes against humanity, but war crimes and crime of aggression against another nation. It's engaging in colonialism. This needs to be resolved. There's U. N. Mechanisms for decolonization. There's a forum on decolonization that calls for decolonization and the right for independence and restoration of independence and freedom of those colonized nations. Why is that not being applied to us? It needs to be applied. If, if the Palestinians, China says Palestinians have the right to self determination, the right to state and Palestinians should govern Palestine. Why is that not being applied to East Turkestan? East Turkestan should be governed by the East Turkistanis, not by the Chinese colonizers. East Turkestan should have the right to self determination. Unlike the case of Palestine. Actually we had a sovereign independent state. We had two independent states in the past, in the 20th century. We have a long history of Turkic in the Indo European and Turkic independent state that span back nearly 3,000, over 3,000 years. So why is this not being applied to us? It's all because of China's influence and control. Influence, political economic influence. A lot of countries are engaged, you know, China is their number one trade partners. China is, you know, their political partners in various aspects. So this is why they turn a blind eye. If like the, for example, for the Muslim world. The Muslim world has been very treacherous when it comes to us. We, we are we. There are no oppressed Muslims in the world as oppressed as the Uyghurs. Because in others you can, you can be like, yeah, they're, they're being killed, they're fighting, they're being bombed. But at least they are able to pray. At least they are able to cry out to God and be like God, punish my enemies for me. You know, they're able to do that. At least they're able to, you know, name themselves, you know, whatever name you know, Muhammad, Arafat, etc. At least they're able to go into their mosques, weep and cry to their God, to God and ask for his help. Us, we can't even do that, forget about crying out to God. We can't even say the word God if we have a name. Like if we're, if our name is Muhammad, if our name is Arafat or anything like that, we have to change it. We have to change it to some Chinese name. We can't even pray. Our mosques, our, our places of religious worship have been turned into toilets, public toilets into bars. Many have been destroyed. Even our dead are deceased. Forget about the living, even our deceased are being destroyed. Our cemeteries are being bulldozed and even those bones are being cremated to show no evidence, to leave no evidence that we existed as a people. Yet nothing is being done. Yet. You have the Muslim countries, the Organization of Islamic Corporation and China's not, you know, none of this is hidden. Everything again is documented. China called Islam an ideological virus. This is what the Chinese government used that, you know, this is an ideological virus that we have to remove from these people. They've burned hundreds of thousands if not millions of Qurans and religious texts. But in, in Europe, if someone, if one person to some one European were to come out and burn a Quran, the entire Muslim world comes out and, and starts declaring Jihad on, on Europe or that person. Yet when it comes to millions of, of Quran's being burned by the Chinese communist state, not a peep. Not a peep. They've sold their religion, they've sold their faith, their brethren for that little bit of benefit that the Chinese are giving them. For that momentary benefit that they are receiving and they will be raised. If we believe in our religion, if we look at the original, the true thing our religion states, whoever you were with, if you were sided with, if you sided with the oppressor, you will be raised with the oppressor. On the day of judgment when you, you know, when God decides to judge you, you will be raised among them and to them you will belong to, with them you will belong. Whatever they face, that's what you will face. So that's all I can say to these Muslim so called Muslim countries, leaders nations, etc. Like we've, like, we, we'd understand if it was, you know, other nations, like other nations. I'd be like, okay, they don't have any, any, any ties to us. They're not ethnically, culturally, religiously close to us. They have no reason to, you know, because sad thing is everyone's out, has to look out for themselves. But those who claim that there are, are religious brothers, those who claim that, you know, they are the defenders of Muslims and, and so forth. Like Turkey, which is both our ethnic kin, is actively working with China not only to, you know, facilitate the genocide, but to undermine our independent struggle. And so what do you say to them other than may God punish you, may God punish all of you, from your government to your, you know, those corrupt leaders, etc, that's all we can do at this point. But this is a sad reality, is that we are being turned over by the world. The world which claims to value human rights, which claims to value, you know, uphold democracy, self determination, which came to be against genocide, colonialism, etc, when it's actually happening in the 21st century. Because of their ties with China, they turn a blind eye to it. But they don't realize that what is happening to East Turkestan is only going to happen to them after China finishes off East Turkistan. That's what they're not realizing. And at this point, what we can do is just keep raising awareness, keep demanding the rights, demanding those governments, those organizations, those individuals uphold their own promises. We can, at this point, we're left to resorting to exposing their own hypocrisy. Like why are you being, why are you claiming this and why are you ignoring this and warning that, you know, this is going to face them if they continue turning a blind eye? Because right now we have a very limited time of opportunity to end this genocide and reverse everything that has been, you know, going to where our people can survive maybe 10, maybe 15 years, no, no more than that. At the current stage of colonization and genocide, we will cease to exist as a people. In 20 years. In 20 years will be completely finished. Sure, you'll be, you'll find, you'll find some people who'll be like, oh, you know, I had my grandparents who were, you know, or my parents were, my grandparents were ultras. You'll find that even here in the west, for example, if, if we, if we continue to live in the United States without our country, if we don't return and our country is not free, if we continue to be stuck here, my level of my identity will be forgotten by my children. My children will end up marrying, you know, God knows who they'll marry in this mixed melting pot. But that's the sad reality that we will face if we don't have our own independent state. Because if you look at the way the world operates, they only care about you. The only time you have an actual voice is if you're a state. And even then, if you're, you know, if you're a weak state, you're still, you know, bullied. You're still bullied by other powers. You still don't have the 100 voice, but you're still able to, you know, survive the bare minimum. You're able to survive as, as a people, as a country, etc, but if you don't have a state, nobody cares. That's the sad reality. And this is why for us, the only way to survive is, the only way to have justice is through establishing our independent state. And this is why governments need to call out China for what it is, a colonial empire. It needs to call out and support our right under international law to national self determination, to decolonization, and ultimately to independence and sovereignty.
- [163:25]
B
For the last part of the interview that I have thought out is, you know, you are talking about needing this pressure to work on independence of your people and the nation. And you talk about advocacy and also the role of unification of your people in governance and also in pushing for these unification for this advocacy works. So I want to ask about, you know, you came from, as an individual advocating for Uyghur independence after you resettle in the United States and from an activist to a politician for a government in exile. What is it like being the former Prime Minister and also current Foreign Minister trying to run a government in exile? None of us, not me, not most of majority of our listeners are not politicians that are currently running in a government in exile. So it would be immensely helpful to see what is it like. And you also hold this heavy burden of responsibility and also emotion as you are living life, going through life, you carry this history and also the obligation to move forward and carry on this baton for what's next. And because this is sort of an unusual government, not on ground government, but it is the government in exile. What are the unique challenges that you, you face, you know, in however brief you can put it? I know there might be, you know, might be a long answer, but also, you know, what, what is the on ground presence like at all? Because in a normal government they would have a military branch or other different Legislative branch that is on ground. But how is it different? How difficult is it or how different is it to run a government in exile? Because you know, like for regular people it is easy to criticize people who are running the government. In fact, over all politicians are prone to being criticized for every aspect of work that they do, whether it's right or wrong or subjective, objective it may be. So what is the system that you receive constructive feedback, especially for the people you serve, but also diaspora people with their own trauma and emotion and their own ideas on how this should be run. What are, what is, what is your role here and you know, tell us the behind the scenes story about this.
- [166:13]
A
So yes, I mean, simply put, it's extremely difficult. It's not as easy as it sounds, especially when your diaspora is, you know, all over the world, especially when you don't have, you know, it's not concentrated. It would have been better, for example, it would have been for us, it would have been more ideal if our government had been based in a neighboring country directly across from East Turkestan. In fact, previously our, before the government in exile was officially established, we had other entities, our predecessors, which were, you know, the de facto government taxiles and they were based in Central Asia, in Kazakhstan, in Almaty, right across the border. So it was much easier to operate there, especially when you have a large diaspora community there too. Our current government in exile was officially formed in 2004, in September of 2004, based here in Washington D.C. because after the Central Asian governments, you know, outlawed our East Turkestan advocacy, our leaders initially tried to, you know, move a little bit, you know, to Turkey, because Turkey, we share cultural ethnic ties and we had a sizable diaspora community there as well. But the Turkish government, again because of being co opted by China, they refused to allow us to, you know, to operate our government exile there. So it took a couple of years for our then predecessors, our leaders to, you know, convince and finally settle on the United States as the, the best place to, to operate our government in exile without any hindrance from China or any other country. Because in the United States, one of the countries good things, it's, you know, there's freedom of speech, freedom of press, freedom of assembly, etc, so these are fundamental rights that no one can, you know, deny. And even if, you know, China were to pressure the United States, the US wouldn't be able to, you know, just hand us over to the Chinese just because the Chinese wanted us. So this is how we ended up in the United States. Our government, as I mentioned, was set up as a parliamentary based government in exile because of previous experiences in running previous entities, like for example, the East Turkestan National Congress or the national center, which was our de facto government exile from 92 until really 2004. There was a lot of problems. You know, we tried doing the, the. Based on the diaspora system, you know, members of the diaspora that have, you know, communities in the diaspora that have larger populations, you know, they have more representation. And then that in turn, you know, caused, you know, one faction or once, you know, group. Because each, each government or each diaspora community in each different country has their own different, you know, influences, whether that's influences from, directly from, you know, that society or the government. So this created problems to where there's infighting and so forth and not, not a whole lot of effective advocacy and effective work done. So we did it in a way that, you know, let's do it like in the U.S. senate system, for example, in the U.S. senate, each state gets, you know, two, two, two rep, two senators. So we're like, all right, let's do each, you know, our predecessors, like, let's do each, you know, diaspora host nation can elect up to 10 representatives. That way everybody will be equal and it'll prevent one faction or one influence from undertaking and you know, heavily influenced in controlling our government for both security reasons. Because if China were to heavily invest into Central Asia, China could use its influence and intelligence operatives. And there's, you know, the risk of infiltration, which is by the Chinese intelligence, which is not a, not a, you know, not something that is uncommon. In fact, there's been many cases of this happening in our diaspora. So this was both for a security and a pragmatic approach to effectively represent our communities. And then, you know, you have to, most importantly, the first thing in setting up this government exile was ideology. Mission. What is your mission? You have to have one key mission. So our government's operating motto is we only have one goal and only one enemy. That's, that's our operating, that's the foundation of our, our mission. So our only enemy is the Chinese state and its occupation forces. Our only goal is East Turkestan, the restoration of East Turkistan's independence. That way nobody can hijack, you know, this and nobody can try to undermine it to, you know, make us, you know, to weaken it. Because you, once you have one mission, one goal, you know, it makes things a lot smoother. So this is the way we've been doing and of course, all of our leadership, unfortunately, as I said, we're not centralized in one location. So our current president, he's based out of Australia. Our prime minister is in Canada as the foreign minister and the speaker of Parliament. We're here in the United States. The Minister of Communications is also here in the United States. Our vice president is in Sweden. Like, so it's, it's not organized in one place. That's the biggest problem that we have. And again, it's because we don't have effective resources to bring all of us together in one place like the Tibetans, because there's not a, a fundamentalized, you know, institution set up, you know, core institution set up. Like, for example, in the Tibetan government exile, they have the city of Dharamshala, that is their capital of their government exile. That literal. That city in Dharamshala in India is literally full of Tibetans. It's only Tibetans. Like, it's not. That is an exclusive Tibetan city. They have, you know, all of their government buildings there, their parliament building, their prime ministers building, their, you know, the research institutions, their, you know, ministries, all of that is there supported by a diaspora of 100, 000 people just in that city alone. So they are far more institutionalized in that aspect. So this is the, the biggest flaw is that we don't, we don't have that. So everything we do is unfortunately, you know, other than the two, three offices we have, everything is run through digital. We engaged in meetings, and so even each month we have parliamentary meetings where all the members of Parliament come and we, you know, debate and vote on certain things, objectives, policies that we do, each representative in each host country, we engage with our diaspora communities. We hear their, their, their concerns, what they want, you know, what they expect from the government, their criticism, their feedback, etc. And we bring that up at the parliamentary level and raise that there within other organizations. Our Minister for Internal affairs and Diaspora affairs, they engage with other diaspora organizations to facilitate collaboration where we can and so forth. These are the different things. So I myself, I focus on foreign, foreign affairs, so, and security, given my academic background. And so I focus mostly on ensuring that, you know, our outreach, our communication with foreign governments, politicians, I help facilitate all of that. So even if I'm not there in that country, I, I pair up our representatives in those countries, I introduce them, I facilitate that connection to those governments. I, you know, through our foreign ministry, we help shape their agenda, what they need to say, what they need to push for. And those representatives carry out that work in their own respective countries. So it's, it's not, it's not easy given this unique setup. But most governments and exiles nowadays in history is, is like that. In fact, many of them, the fact that you're in exile is. The fact is, because you don't have, you know, the ability to be in your own country. So you had historical governments in exiles like the Polish government in exile, the Lithuanian, Estonian, Latvian governments in exile, which for, you know, from 1945 until 1991 until they regained independence, continued to represent their nations and to advocate for their independence and restoration of sovereignty. And it took, you know, over almost 70 years. And you know, those governments, after they got independence, some, some, some of those governments dissolved entirely where others members of those governments ended up becoming leaders of those independent nation of the nations that regained their independence. And there's, you know, I studied, we studied, you know, other examples as well. I think for us like the best model would be like Tibet. But again, finding a country along our border that would allow us to set up a base is very difficult. The Tibetans, they got very lucky in the sense with India, because one, that proximity allows them to remain close. With Tibet, people go back and forth or used to go back and forth, but people can still flee or try to flee from Tibet. And, and they have a government to represent them. And because it's in one area, you could be far more institutionalized, you know, not across, you know, multiple time zones. So like setting up a meeting, we, we do it, you know, every year. We put up our calendar in advance. This is the exact time, this is the exact time that we'll have our parliamentary meetings and then our, you know, government cabinet, we meet at least once a week. The ministers, they also meet once to meet the parliament. The heads of the parliamentary committees, they also meet once a week to, you know, highlight key issues. And then whatever, you know, that they want us to do, they push it up. Which comes to the executive council, which is made up of our president, our prime minister, vice president, the speaker and deputy speaker of the parliament, and then the foreign minister and deputy prime minister. So it's, this is the way that we function or try to function. And there are disagreements, you know, we have disagreements. But this is why even in the executive council and even each committee, we do it at odd, you know, odd numbers that way. What if it's even, you know, there's going to be a tie and then it's like the same thing. So we put it odd numbers to where we can come to a decision democratically to vote on it on high level decisions. And then the most important thing is again, communication, being in touch with both our representatives on the ground as well as the community, but also, you know, the leadership. And there has been trouble, you know, in the past there were instances where, you know, communication was not effective. But this is why we regularly hold parliamentary meetings before, before my administration. Actually, when I, I, I, this is the thing that I changed. Before that it was every, every quarter the Parliament would convene. And I was like, no, this is not going to be effective to get people on the ground to do their jobs. So like I said, we need to do it at least once a month. We do it on a Sunday. Everyone's off from work. It's easy. You know, maximum two hours that way. We ahead of that, at least one week ahead of that. Everyone needs to send their agenda items, you know, that they want to raise that way it, it's, you know, effective that way. There's no argument. And even there, we vote on every procedure that we want to, you know, undertake. That way everything is done in a democratic fashion that represents the will of our people. So this is the way that we have been operating. But every ministry has its own task. Every member of parliament, you know, they are divided up into either committees or ministries and they do, they do their own tasks as well. Right now, to be honest, we don't receive any, you know, foreign funding. This is another issue is the fact that the lack of funding, the lack of proper funding and operating on a shoestring budget constrain is a lot of things that, that we could otherwise do. So, but we're supported by our diaspora through donations from our diaspora and as, as part of our principle, like none of our government officials, none of us receive a salary. Everything is purely volunteer. In fact, we donate each month. At minimum, each member of Parliament has to donate $30. And that's to show, to instill the sacrifice, but also to be a role model for our population across our diaspora. So this, this is the, the way that our operations has been, I mean, we've, we've been through a lot. There has been attempts, you know, by certain influences, whether it's China or whether it's Turkey, to try to create problems within our government, internal problems. But thankfully we've had, you know, we, we've tightened up things to where, you know, anyone with a recorded, any type of, recorded history of, you know, working with the Chinese occupation forces and the occupation regime, whether it's as, as a, as a, a security official or as a, you know, you know, their political, you know, little Puppet administrators, all of that we've, we've removed, you know, we've prohibited from being even a candidate for a parliamentary position because if we don't do that, then it opens room for these problems. And because of that, like prior to really 2020, until I started, you know, studying about other effective ways to do this, this is to, you know, push, you know, to deal with these problems. And I discovered part of this might be this problem because we had, unfortunately we had some shady folks within our own diaspora, their own communities. So, you know, we decided, you know, we need to do a thorough background check on everyone in our government because we can't just be like, oh, you know, this guy, he claims to be fighting for independence, or he says independence, but then, oh, wait, back home he was this person. You know, you have to be mindful of that. And after that, thankfully, we don't have any problems anymore. No internal problems whatsoever. The only thing is Turkey, Turkey's government, occasionally, every time, every time it's been like this. Every time our government thinks all has elections, they try to, you know, create problems around that time. You know, they'll use, they'll create misinformation or they'll try to, you know, rally our, certain folks within our diaspora communities in those countries to, to oppose the government, stuff like that. But it's typical Chinese intelligence operations. And over the years we've exposed them like, because many of them, they'll come out pretending that, you know, they'll, they're pro independence and stuff. And then they'll be like, oh, but you know, we, we're going to create a different government. Like this is one of the things that they try to do. We're going to create a different government. Instead of calling East Turkistan, we're going to call it something else, something like that. And it's like, oh, and they'll, they'll openly say, oh, our advisors, our Turkish advisors are advising us to do this. They're former government officials, they know better. And it's like, aha. Then you start exploring the backgrounds, you know, investigating the backgrounds of these advisors and then you find out that they work at think tanks that have intelligence and cooperation with other Chinese tank tanks which are, you know, Chinese government think tanks. And it's like, okay, well expose that. And their game failed. So there, this is the common thing that I have to deal with is pushing back against Chinese from the security aspect, Chinese influence and infiltration also via Turkey, from the foreign affairs, making sure our, our government's policies, our people's aspirations are well reflected in, in, in, in our advocacy and even from a communication perspective, like communication minister, responsible for, you know, ensuring that all of our social media posts and everything is, you know, top notch and fully reflects people's goals and aspirations.
- [186:03]
B
Yeah. As we're coming to a close, I want to talk about the missing piece, which is the United States role. You know, under the current Trump administration, the value of an engagement with a foreign country or foreign entity is usually based on what the other party can do for America. Is it going to make America stronger, more prosperous or secure? So based on those three points, where does independence of East Turkestan fit in? And you said before that like in previous history, the United States is quote unquote, tough on China. So is, is this either or situation where is United States more lenient towards working together with China or is it independent of that decision? And of course, the human rights issues, human rights violation issues going on in the region also is usually a good argument to make for entity or individuals to act. But in the off chance that people feel like doing the right thing is not enough in an argument, where would the United States policy fit in and how does the independence of East Pakistan fit into the narrative of what's in it for America?
- [187:29]
A
Well, I think this is if we look at it from just politics itself. Everyone cares about their own interests. Every country is all they care about at the end of the day is does it align with their own interests, their own, whether that's political interest, economic interests, security interests. So the way East Turkestan fits into this is we have to look at the thing of the, you know, in politics 101, you know, the enemy of my enemy is my friend. So from us, you know, the United States is an enemy of China, whether they officially call themselves enemies or not. That, that doesn't really matter because at the end of the day they are, they are enemies. I mean, they, they like to be more diplomatic about it, that, oh, we're strategic competitive. Well, the US Likes to be more diplomatic about it, that it's a strategic competitor. China is like, yeah, it's my enemy. China doesn't really care about the, the language it uses in, in that aspect of. So the United States is extremely vital in that sense. In the sense not only for that reason, but that if, you know, tensions, if the competition were to veer into a different direction to where it's, you know, no longer going to be, you know, diplomacy, but more confrontation, the United States has the capabilities, the resources and the influence to shape geopolitical Outcomes, outcomes like an independent East Turkistan. So this is why our predecessors in the 90s, after they were expelled out of central Asia, they, you know, felt that the United States was the country that would play. Could really help us in the future. Because if you look at history, when two great powers compete, one is going to come at top. At the end of the day, they're not going to be equal. On equal footing. One, both of them fly to become, you know, more powerful than the other. And that ultimately leads to competition and then ultimately confrontation. So in our aspect, you know, China is increasingly dominating Eurasia. China is increasingly rising. This is a threat to the security, political and economic interests of the United States. And slowly the United States is recognizing that. They're recognizing it a little bit too late, but still not like it's not like completely too late. You know, if they had recognized this two decades ago, it would have been very bad. It would have been better for the world. But anyhow, so we focus on that shared interest. So we highlight the fact that an independent East Turkistan is strategically vital to U. S. Interests. From the economic perspective, the United States needs critical minerals, you know, rare earth and critical minerals. Much of China's rare earth and critical minerals comes from east Turkestan. East Turkistan sustains China's economic development and growth. Our slave labor is what's able to keep China so, you know, competitive in terms of its pricing of its goods. Because the real, the, the real GDP and the real, you know, cost of living in China has actually gotten much higher than it was 20 years ago. In fact, China has a stronger like out on per capita GDP than many of the countries in, in its neighboring areas. It's not a developing country anymore, you know, that like it claims to be, claims that it is. So the reason is still able to produce goods so cheaply and saturate the global market is through the slave labor, through using, you know, our people as slaves. But at the same time, China uses, you know, the technology and stuff that it steals from other nations to put out the, the put out western, you know, companies out of competition. So virtually a lot of companies have no longer exist anymore because they got overplayed by China, by Chinese companies, which is heavily subsidized by the Chinese state. So from an economic perspective, an independent East Turkestan would substantially weaken China to where it would no longer be an economic powerhouse to be able to challenge the United States or Europe or other, you know, countries that view China as a strategic threat. From a political perspective, again, East Turkistan makes up roughly a fifth of the total areas of the prc. An independent East Turkestan would severely weaken the PRC to where, you know, it wouldn't be a political powerhouse either. It would, in fact, the independent East Turkistan could be a strategic bulwark against, you know, China to keep it in check as well as, you know, any other potential power. Because even the Eurasianist academic, he's actually American, but he focused on Eurasia Olin lot more. He stated that East Turkestan is the pivot of Asia. If you want to. This is why over history, vast empires would always compete for influence and control over East Turkestan. An independent East Turkestan would, you know, essentially play as a buffer between different powers, but at the same time, with whoever powers were more aligned with, they would have more say. Because if you can influence East Turkestan, you can influence Eurasia. This is why China has been using East Turkistan to effectively influence and dominate Eurasia over the past, especially over the past 20 years. So there's that from a security perspective, an independent East Turkestan again, even right now, like if conflict were to break out in the Indo Pacific, working with East Turkestan or supporting an East Turkistani resistance would put a flank on China's West. We could cut off China's west east pipelines. We could essentially give their what they fear, you know, their nightmare. We could turn it into a reality. And that would cost, you know, the US and other powers much less than having to fight a direct, you know, costly war with China. So these are the three, you know, ways that, you know, an independent East Turkestan fits in the US national interest. Again, the US is not quite ready yet for that period. In fact, China is not ready to go to war yet either. Both sides are trying to buy time. So if you remember, initially this year, President Trump rolled out massive sanctions on China. And China countered by essentially saying, oh, you know, if you do that, we're going to prevent the export of critical minerals to you. And China controls the processing of over 70% of the globe's critical minerals. And critical minerals are used for everything from, you know, these electronics that we are using to the microphones to the phones, to, you know, literally everything out there to missile defense, to AI etc. And that's why in South Korea they made, you know, they, they engaged in a temporary detante, like detent, where for a year, I'm not going to do this, you're not going to do that. We'll revisit this issue a year and hope And I, immediately after that, the US held the Central Asia Summit with Central Asian countries exploring, you know, critical minerals development. Japan just last week also did the same thing. Japan is, and China are becoming more and more confrontational over the issue of Taiwan. So the geopolitical climate is going into that direction where there is going to be some, you know, some form of confrontation and conflict that is going to wear off from just, you know, diplomatic, you know, competition. It's, it's, it's inevitable, it's bound to happen. And so we have to be there in that position to take advantage of that. Because for us, that's the only way that we can, you know, exist. Because if we, even if we, if we let go of this opportunity and we still fall for the autonomy and whatever promises that three consecutive Chinese administrations, occupation regimes have made over the past 100 years, we will cease to exist in another 20, 30 years. Similarly, again, our goal is one, raise awareness for the public pressure, you know, focus on what the public actually cares about because people are concerned about genocide, colonialism, governments, they care, tend, they tend to care more about, you know, economics and politics, security. And so we highlight why it's in their security interest and we try to slowly facilitate things. Slowly there are more and more American officials that are also calling on, you know, the US government to start using, you know, revert back to using East Turkestan instead of Xinjiang. So I believe this is going to become more common and I believe that sooner or later the US will ultimately recognize us as an occupied country and support our right to self determination. But it's just a matter of time. There's still some, you know, other issues that need to be worked out.
- [198:50]
B
Thank you, thank you for your time and, you know, for this comprehensive and informative interview. But not only that, you know, thank you for sharing your story and how it came about and in really relation to how it relates to the bigger foreign policy aspect of issues.
- [199:15]
A
Absolutely. Thank you for having me. And, and thank you for, for highlighting this. I hope you enjoyed today's conversation. Given the importance of the topics we cover, it's my firm commitment and guarantee that our podcast feed will never sit behind a paywall and that all of our episodes will be freely available for all to access. However, just because the episodes are free does not mean that there is no cost with producing them. Truth be told, it can sometimes be a bit of a challenge to keep afloat from month to month. And sometimes our limited resources prevent us from taking on the type of content that we'd really like to pursue. So if you found today's episode of Value and would like to help us continue to produce more interviews just like this one, we would greatly appreciate a contribution. You can offer up a small recurring donation Through Patreon or PayPal or or Explore our other donation options by going to insight myanmar.org donation we also invite you to consider stepping up your level of support by becoming a member. You can learn more about this by going to insight myanmar.org membership thank you very much for your consideration.