October 12,1949 marks China’s belligerent invasion of East Turkistan, a country that China subsequently renamed “Xinjiang,” which translates to ‘new territory’ or ‘colony’ in the Chinese language.
China’s invasion was a brutal act of aggression that has led to decades of colonisation, genocide, and occupation,
Contrary to China’s deceptive narrative of a ‘peaceful liberation,’ the Chinese Communist invasion of East Turkistan was a ruthless act of aggression that killed over 1,20,000 East Turkistanis from the time of the Chinese invasion on October 12, 1949, until the end of 1952.
Since the invasion, East Turkistan and its people have been subjected to a brutal campaign of colonisation, assimilation, and occupation, escalating into genocide after 2014.
This campaign includes the mass internment of over 3 million Uyghurs, Kazakhs, Kyrgyz, and other Turkic peoples in concentration camps, prisons, and forced labour camps; the mass sterilisation of Uyghur and other Turkic women; the destruction of over 16,000 cultural and religious sites; widespread surveillance; systematic rape of Uyghur and Turkic women; and the forced separation of over 880,000 Uyghur children from their families.
These atrocities have been officially recognised as genocide and crimes against humanity by the US government, more than a dozen Western parliaments, and the UN.