In July 2020, the East Turkistan Government in Exile (ETGE) asked the International Criminal Court to investigate the many substantiated charges of genocide and related crimes committed against the Uyghurs and other Turkic peoples by the Chinese government. It has renewed its request several times.
The ETGE must be wondering whether it is wasting its time, especially in light of the ICC’s sponsorship of a Chinese version of its Moot Court Competition, the latest winner of which has turned out to be Tsinghua University. This is not exactly a sign of the ICC’s good faith, argues Salih Hudayar, prime minister of the government in exile.
“We are deeply dismayed that while Uyghur victims are imploring the ICC to investigate their cases where it can to uphold justice, the ICC is at the same time hosting a university from China which has played a pivotal role in shaping the very campaign to target and persecute the Uyghur population in Chinese Occupied East Turkistan and abroad,” Hudayar says, as quoted in Eurasia Review. “It is most hurtful to those who have already suffered so much as result of the attacks on Uyghurs.
“It is well-established that Tsinghua University has had a key part in the repression, surveillance and persecution of Uyghurs in East Turkistan and abroad. The ICC should be aware of these reports and should certainly not be ignoring them as if everything is normal in its dealings with such bodies.”
ETGE counsel Rodney Dixon adds that instead of inviting institutions like Tsinghua University, whose professors have worked to rationalize the production of a unified “state-race” that involves forcible dilution of “ethnic group identity,” the ICC “should rather be prioritising the investigation of the grave international crimes perpetrated against Uyghurs over which the Court can rightly exercise its jurisdiction.”
