Uyghur leader: Biden does not deliver on campaign promises in China

The Prime Minister of the East Turkestan Government-in-Exile, Salih Khudayar, accused President Joe Biden of failing to fulfill his campaign promises to raise his voice against the Chinese Communist Party’s genocide against the Uighurs, at a protest in front of the White House on Tuesday.

Activists among the East Turkestan government-in-exile, the East Turkestan National Awakening Movement and the persecuted communities in the East Turkestan region held a march and protest on Tuesday to commemorate the 2009 Urumqi massacre.

That same year, in response to news in the capital of East Turkestan that Han Chinese workers from East Guangdong used sticks to beat an unknown number of slaves in East Turkestan with sticks to their death in their homeland, the Communist Party violently suppressed an uprising in the capital of East Turkestan. . . . The victims were taken by bus to factories in other parts of the country to work.

For decades, China has used forcible resettlement of East Turkestan residents into factories, schools and farms elsewhere in the country to weaken the identity of ethnic groups living in the region. Uyghurs make up the majority of East Turkestan’s population, which was an independent republic before Mao Zedong took over the region in 1949. Nike, Nintendo, BMW and Apple, which make products that buy Uighur slaves through government programs in factories outside of East Turkestan.

In addition to commemorating the anniversary of the Urumqi massacre, the group will gather outside the White House for further action from Biden to prevent the ongoing genocide of the region’s indigenous people, including not only the labor of slaves but also forced sterilization and abortion. requested to request. . Nearly 3 million people in concentration camps as corrals.

In his speech to the event participants, Khudayar said, “Today, the massacre in Urumqi continues every day, millions of Uyghurs, Kazakhs, Kyrgyz and other Turkish people are imprisoned in concentration camps, prisons, slave labor.” From coercion to obtain organs, to torture, to rape, to sterilization and even murder.”

“It has been eight years since China officially started the People’s War in May 2014, which it calls the genocidal campaign against the Uighurs and other Turkish peoples,” Khudayar said. “It has been almost two years since the US government and parliaments around the world officially recognized atrocities as genocide and crimes against humanity. But little has been done to stop the ongoing genocide in China.”

Regarding Biden in particular, Khudayar stated that Biden was vocal in holding China responsible for the genocide of the Uighurs in the 2020 elections.

“During the campaign, President Biden promised to act as strongly as possible against the genocide of the Uighurs in China, but President Biden and his administration are not delivering on their campaign promises as China continues to kill Uighurs every day,” Khudayar said.

“We won’t be following what they’re doing,” Biden said, referring to the Democratic primary in China in December 2019. “We need to move 60 percent of our navy to this part of the world so that the Chinese realize that they can never go any further. We are there to protect other people.”

Biden apparently changed his stance soon after he sat down, describing the Uyghur genocide as a “cultural” difference between America and China at the CNN town hall in February 2021.

Saying that dictator Xi Jinping “understands” that “there is no president in America,” Biden said, “Culturally, every country has different standards that they must follow, and they – their leaders -” said. values ​​of the United States. ”

The comments suggest that Biden will pressure Xi on his long list of human rights abuses, not because he intends to act on the issues at hand, but for fear that he will lose the support of the American people.

Hudayar also noted that international organizations such as the United Nations did not resist the genocide.

Chinese State Councilor and Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi met with United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet in Guangzhou, south China’s Guangdong province, on May 23, 2022. (Deng Hua/Xinhua via Getty)

“The UN and other major international organizations remain silent and are heavily involved in that silence,” Khudayar said. “Despite repeated calls from many organisations, parliaments and even the government, the UN could not publish a report on the situation in East Turkestan.”

In May, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet visited East Turkestan. After the visit, he praised the Communist Party for its “enormous achievement” in the field of human rights and declared the concentration camps to be abolished, prompting widespread condemnation and Bachelet’s oath that she would not seek a second term for office.

Khudayar warned that the inaction of nearly all major international players in the face of genocide could lead to China’s victory.

“There may not be any Uighurs to be rescued for ten years,” he warned.