A Uyghur Leader Exposes the CCP’s Propaganda War

Jul 17, 2025 - 09:59 Updated: Jul 17, 2025 - 09:49

A Uyghur Leader Exposes the CCP’s Propaganda War

Commentary

A Uyghur exile leader reveals how the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) uses propaganda, infiltration, and intelligence operations to portray the independence movement as terrorism and silence global support.

In recent months, the CCP’s repression of the Uyghur population has intensified both inside the country and abroad. While some Uyghurs are now allowed to apply for passports, they face strict conditions, including limited travel windows, mandatory check-ins, and the confiscation of their passports upon return.

Uyghurs abroad must undergo heavy vetting to visit Xinjiang, are often barred from staying with family, and are forced to join state-run propaganda tours where speaking Uyghur is prohibited. Condemnation peaked in February when Thailand deported 40 Uyghur men to China. While Thai and Chinese officials claimed it was a humane act, Human Rights Watch warns the men now face likely abuse, torture, detention, or worse.

Against this backdrop of deepening control, I spoke with Salih Hudayar, foreign minister of the East Turkistan Government in Exile and leader of the East Turkistan National Awakening Movement, who continues to fight for independence, cultural identity, and survival in the face of CCP repression, which the United States has formally recognized as genocide.

Hudayar noted that the CCP is expanding its organ harvesting centers across Xinjiang, tripling their number. “From a religious perspective, our people aren’t supposed to donate organs,” he said. “Yet China claims these are voluntary transplant centers, which is not the case.”

Hudayar traced the roots of the CCP’s current abuses to the early 1990s, following the collapse of the Soviet Union, when Uyghur nationalist sentiment began to rise. Although uncoordinated, this grassroots resistance took the form of small-scale acts of defiance, primarily targeting Chinese military and security forces.

In response, the CCP convened a top-secret Politburo Standing Committee meeting in March 1996 to address what it called the “stability maintenance” of Xinjiang. Hudayar explained that the CCP identified East Turkestan separatism as the greatest threat to China’s internal stability and accused the United States of supporting the independence movement. The Party issued 10 directives aimed at dismantling the movement and tightening control over the region.

Directive No. 8, Hudayar explained, instructed officials to use China’s diplomatic and political influence to co-opt Muslim-majority countries, such as Turkey, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Uzbekistan, to help suppress the Uyghur independence movement. At the same time, Beijing sought to infiltrate and divide the Uyghur diaspora, winning over overseas community groups while isolating those who continued to advocate for independence.

Exploiting post-Soviet fears of Islamic extremism, the CCP launched its first major “Strike Hard” campaign in 1996. Days after issuing “Document No. 7,” authorities arrested thousands of alleged separatists.

During this period, the CCP selectively released a small group of Uyghur prisoners who fled to Pakistan, one of Beijing’s closest allies, where they founded the East Turkestan Islamic Party (ETIP), a group that, according to Hudayar, sharply diverged from the secular nationalist movement.

“While our nationalist groups in Central Asia were trying to rally global support for independence, this small group of fewer than a dozen individuals went a different direction,” he said.

“They declared that God would not ask what we had done for East Turkestan, but what we had done for Islam.”

Hudayar believes this was a long-term Chinese intelligence operation aimed at portraying the Uyghur movement as extremist, undermining Western support, and justifying brutal repression under the guise of counterterrorism.

“Nationalism is un-Islamic. The Uyghurs need to focus on fighting all the global infidels, starting with the United States,” he said, summarizing the propaganda pushed by ETIP. “Don’t mention China, fighting against China can wait. We have to fight the U.S.”

In response to the emergence of ETIP, Uyghur leaders in Central Asia publicly reaffirmed that their movement was rooted in national liberation, not Islamic fundamentalism. Many suspected that the ETIP founders, who had been released from Chinese prisons and later seen in Pakistan, were Chinese agents sent to discredit the broader cause.

Central Asian governments responded with harsh repression. “Many of our leaders were arrested or deported. Some citizens of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Uzbekistan were assassinated,” Hudayar said. By 1998, the independence movement in Central Asia had been effectively dismantled.

After the 9/11 terrorist attacks, China further exploited global fears of terrorism by aligning ETIP with the Taliban and rebranding it as the East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM). This narrative, Hudayar said, persists today and helps the CCP frame its persecution of Uyghurs as counterterrorism.

The strategy escalated with the outbreak of the Syrian civil war. “By 2012, China started engaging more deeply with Turkey,” Hudayar said. Thousands of Uyghurs fled East Turkestan through Southeast Asia, ending up in Syria via Turkish networks. By 2014 and 2015, ISIS propaganda videos featured Uyghurs calling for an Islamic caliphate in China.

The CCP seized on these images, using them to justify its mass internment of Uyghurs in what it calls vocational training centers, facilities human rights groups widely condemn as concentration camps.

East Turkestan’s Few Friends

According to Hudayar, the CCP’s strategy has successfully alienated both Western and Muslim nations from supporting the Uyghur cause. Propaganda portraying the movement as extremist undermined Western sympathy, while economic leverage through the Belt and Road Initiative silenced Muslim-majority countries.

“Not Brunei, not Turkey, not Saudi Arabia, not Pakistan, not even Iran,” Hudayar said. “None of the countries that claim to defend Islam support us.

“In fact, many, including Turkey and the Central Asian republics, have helped China suppress our movement and legitimize its ongoing genocide.”

Even in Afghanistan, he said, Uyghurs who joined the Taliban found no support. “Despite their Islamic rhetoric, the Taliban have completely sold out to China and ignore the genocide happening just across the border,” he noted.

The United States and more than a dozen European countries remain the primary supporters of the Uyghur cause, but their backing is limited.

“We have the genocide recognition,” Hudayar said, “but no real meaningful action beyond symbolic condemnation.”

He called for accountability through the International Criminal Court (ICC), where his group filed a complaint in 2020 and submitted six supporting dossiers. The case remains on hold, with the ICC awaiting a request from member states to initiate an investigation.

Hudayar also called on Washington to treat East Turkestan on par with Tibet, such as using the name “East Turkestan” rather than the Chinese term “Xinjiang,” appointing a special coordinator at the State Department, and recognizing the region as occupied.

Finally, Hudayar emphasized the need for long-term preparation, urging both the Uyghur people and the United States to be prepared for a potential future conflict with China.

“When conflict does break out,” he said, “that’s when we will have our opportunity.”

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.