The East Turkistan Government in Exile (ETGE) rejected China’s “Law on Promoting Ethnic Unity and Progress”, and called for global action against what it described as the “broader system of Chinese imperialism and colonial domination”.
According to the ETGE, the law adopted on Thursday by the National People’s Congress of China on March 12, though framed as promoting “ethnic unity,” establishes a legal framework to forcefully impose Han Chinese identity, language, and culture over non-Chinese peoples, in direct violation of international prohibitions against racial discrimination.
These “draconian policies”, it said, are textbook examples of “imperialism, fascism, and racism, codifying systematic genocide and colonial domination” under the guise of “ethnic unity.”
“The law mandates the expansion of Mandarin Chinese across education, media, and public life, while suppressing the use of Uyghur, Tibetan, and Mongolian languages. It also enforces policies of forced assimilation, Chinese settler colonialism, and demographic engineering, including organised population transfers, state-directed settlement programs, and government-coerced inter-ethnic marriages, intended to weaken and eliminate non-Chinese peoples in their homelands,” the ETGE stated.
According to the exiled authorities, the policies adopted by the Chinese authorities “meet the criteria for genocide under the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide”.
Condemning the legislation, it further noted that any actions deemed to “damage ethnic unity” are criminalised under “vague and sweeping provisions” of law, subjecting peaceful expression of ethnic and cultural identity, beliefs, religious practice, and cultural preservation of non-Han peoples to severe punishment.
“Religious institutions are forced to follow the Chinese Communist Party’s policy of Sinicisation, putting faith, worship, and religious life under direct state control and systematically eroding the freedom of belief for Muslim, Buddhist, and other communities,” the exiled group added.
According to the ETGE, the newly passed legislation also extends Beijing’s transnational repression by asserting jurisdiction over acts committed outside China that allegedly undermine “ethnic unity,” creating an additional mechanism to intimidate diaspora communities, activists, scholars, and journalists who expose Beijing’s “colonial and genocidal policies” abroad.
“This law is a weaponised blueprint for erasing non-Chinese peoples. The people of East Turkistan, Tibet, and Southern Mongolia face systematic destruction of their identity, language, faith, and very existence. The international community cannot stand idle while colonialism and genocide are codified into law,” said Salih Hudayar, Minister of Foreign Affairs and Security of the ETGE.
The exiled Turkistan leaders called on the international community to impose targeted sanctions on Chinese officials responsible for these “systematic policies of racism, colonialism, and genocide, while countering Beijing’s transnational repression”.
They further urged global actors to ensure accountability for “genocide and crimes against humanity”, uphold the right to national self-determination, and support the “complete decolonisation and restoration of independence for colonised peoples” under United Nations principles.
