East Turkistan National Awakening Movement (ETNAM) commended the US Senate for introducing a resolution that recognises China's atrocities against Uyghurs as a genocide.
"US Senators Robert Menendez, Ranking Member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and John Cornyn introduced a bipartisan resolution on Monday to designate human rights abuses perpetrated by the People's Republic of China against the Uyghur people and other Turkic peoples in Occupied East Turkistan as a genocide," the ETNAM said in a statement.
According to the statement, Menendez and Cornyn were joined by Senators James Risch, Marco Rubio, Ben Cardin, and Jeff Merkley. "The resolution would hold China accountable under the 1948 United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide and begin the process to coordinate an international response to bring these abuses to a halt," it added.
"Working with the people of East Turkistan, ETNAM has been actively pushing for a genocide resolution for over two years," said ETNAM's Founder and President Salih Hudayar and added, "It is our hope that the U.S. Government and the international community take immediate and stronger action to bring an end China's prolonged colonization, genocide, and occupation in East Turkistan."
The statement made by the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee "incorrectly described the Uyghurs and other Turkic peoples in East Turkistan as ethnic minorities" and the ETNAM had "made it very clear" in its draft resolutions handed to over 100 Congressional Members that the Uyghurs, Kazakhs, Kyrgyz, and other Turkic peoples constitute the majority of East Turkistan's population and that it is the Chinese colonists who are the "minorities."
According to the statement, the ETNAM urges the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee to use the proper term East Turkistan when describing the homeland of the Uyghur and Turkic peoples.
"The name "Xinjiang" is a colonial terminology meng "the New Territory," which was imposed on East Turkistan. However, East Turkistan's people intensely hate it. Furthermore, it wasn't until 1955 that East Turkistan was designated as the so-called 'Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region'," it added.
Xinjiang region is home to around 10 million Uyghurs. The Turkic Muslim group, which makes up around 45 per cent of Xinjiang's population, has long accused China's authorities of cultural, religious and economic discrimination.
About 7 per cent of the Muslim population in Xinjiang, has been incarcerated in an expanding network of "political re-education" camps, according to US officials and UN experts.
Classified documents known as the China Cables, accessed last year by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, threw light on how the Chinese government uses technology to control Uyghur Muslims worldwide.
However, China regularly denies such mistreatment and says the camps provide vocational training. People in the internment camps have described being subjected to forced political indoctrination, torture, beatings, and denial of food and medicine, and say they have been prohibited from practising their religion or speaking their language.
Now, as Beijing denies these accounts, it also refuses to allow independent inspections into the regions, at the same time, which further fuels reports related to China's atrocities on the minority Muslims.
( With inputs from ANI )
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