Originally published https://www.eurasiareview.com/10112025-how-east-turkistans-spirit-endures-beijings-attempted-erasure-oped/
Ninety-six years after the first East Turkistan Republic declared independence, its spirit endures — not in territory, but in memory.
On 12 November 1933, more than 20,000 people gathered in Kashgar to raise the Kök Bayraq, the sky-blue flag bearing a white crescent and star. It fluttered above hopes of self-determination and sovereignty — briefly. Five months later, the fledgling republic fell. Eleven years later, a Second East Turkistan Republic emerged in Ghulja, only to be subsumed by the newly founded People’s Republic of China in 1949.
The republics vanished, but the idea did not. Today, as Beijing wages what the United Nations and numerous parliaments describe as crimes against humanity — possibly genocide — the preservation of East Turkistan’s memory has itself become a form of resistance. Memory, in this context, is not nostalgia. It is survival.
The Republics That Refused to Die
The First East Turkistan Republic (1933-1934) marked the first modern attempt by Uyghurs and other Turkic peoples to establish a sovereign nation-state. Born amid the collapse of Qing imperial control and local resistance to Chinese warlordism, it lasted only five months before being crushed by Hui troops with Soviet backing.
The Second Republic (1944-1949), centred in Ghulja (Yining), went further: it issued its own currency, adopted a constitution, maintained diplomatic channels with the Soviet Union, and fielded a modernised army. Its leaders envisioned a secular, multi-ethnic republic rooted in Turkic identity and Islamic culture. But geopolitics intervened. In August 1949, five top leaders — including Ehmetjan Qasimi — died in what remains an unexplained plane crash en route to meet Mao Zedong. By December, the People’s Liberation Army absorbed the territory, extinguishing the republic yet again.
For Uyghurs, 12 November is not just an anniversary — it is a day of mourning and remembrance, marking both the republics’ brief sovereignty and their betrayal.
Commemoration in Exile
Across continents, the East Turkistan flag still flies each November. In Washington, London, Munich, Istanbul, and The Hague, Uyghur diaspora communities mark Independence Day through vigils, cultural festivals, and rallies. In 2024, the UK Uyghur Community organised public exhibitions combining traditional music, dance, and photography — a rare opportunity for younger generations born in exile to experience the vibrancy of a culture now endangered at its source.
In the United States, former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi joined commemorations at Capitol Hill, calling Uyghur heritage “a treasure to be preserved, not erased.” Similar solidarity events were held in Canada and Australia. These gatherings serve not only as remembrance but also as classrooms — spaces for transmitting language, faith, and identity that have been criminalised inside Xinjiang.
For the Uyghur diaspora, to celebrate is to resist.
The Criminalisation of Memory
Inside Xinjiang, remembrance itself is a punishable act. Since 1949, the Kök Bayraq — the national flag of East Turkistan — has been banned. In 2005, Human Rights Watch documented the arrest of a Uyghur writer who published a short story about a blue pigeon choosing death over captivity; authorities deemed it “separatist literature” because the bird’s colour resembled the banned flag.
The repression of symbolism extends to physical erasure. A 2024 Human Rights Watch report revealed that Beijing had renamed 630 villages, stripping Islamic and Uyghur references and replacing them with Mandarin names extolling “happiness,” “harmony,” and “prosperity.”
The destruction of mosques and cemeteries has been equally systematic. The Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) estimates that 65 percent of mosques — around 16,000 structures — have been damaged or demolished since 2017. The 1,000-year-old Jama Mosque in Hotan and several medieval cemeteries have been bulldozed. The erasure of Uyghur architecture is now as deliberate as the suppression of its language.
Every act of remembrance — a prayer, a song, a poem in Uyghur — becomes an act of defiance.
Language and Education: Fighting Cultural Extinction
Language is the heart of identity — and Beijing’s primary target. In 2017, the Hotan Prefecture Education Department issued a directive banning Uyghur language instruction at all educational levels. Mandarin became the exclusive medium of teaching, even in preschools. By 2021, China’s Ministry of Education mandated “national standard language” across all ethnic kindergartens, effectively ending Uyghur-language education for new generations.
For Uyghur parents, the result is devastating. Boarding schools separate children from families; reports indicate that more than 400 minors in Uyghur-majority townships have both parents detained in camps. UNESCO and UN human-rights experts have condemned these policies as violations of linguistic and cultural rights enshrined in international law.
In exile, however, Uyghur language schools are multiplying. In Fairfax, Virginia, Ana Care and Education now teaches over 60 students the Uyghur alphabet, poetry, and folklore. The Uyghur Academy, headquartered in Ankara, coordinates over 100 volunteer teachers in 14 countries. Its five-volume Language and Literature Textbook Series aims to ensure that no child of East Turkistan grows up linguistically orphaned.
The Global Uyghur Congress: Memory Organised
Founded in 2004 in Munich, the World Uyghur Congress (WUC) remains the primary institutional voice of East Turkistan’s exiled people. Its mission — “to use peaceful, democratic means to determine the political future of East Turkistan” — has placed it at the forefront of global advocacy.
In March 2025, WUC’s honorary president Dolkun Isa addressed the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, denouncing Beijing’s “network of concentration camps” and forced labour programmes. The organisation’s research units produce weekly situation reports, track disappearances, and document sterilisation campaigns and forced transfers of children.
Through partnerships with NGOs, legal scholars, and UN special rapporteurs, the WUC pushes for accountability — from Magnitsky sanctions on Chinese officials to legislative bans on products made with forced labour. Yet beyond diplomacy, its deeper function is symbolic: to ensure East Turkistan’s story is told in the halls of power where Beijing seeks silence.
A Legacy of Defiance
Ninety-six years on, East Turkistan survives as an idea that refuses erasure. It lives in the recitation of Uyghur poetry in London classrooms, in the rhythmic dap drums of Istanbul’s cultural fairs, and in the halls of Geneva where exiles lobby for justice. Every song, every commemorative flag, every whispered prayer restores fragments of a history Beijing has sought to annihilate.
Authoritarian regimes believe erasure is final. But memory, shared across continents, defeats the architecture of repression.
As long as Uyghur children abroad learn their alphabet, as long as survivors testify, and as long as the blue crescent flag is raised each 12 November, East Turkistan endures. Its republics fell; its idea did not. Memory remains its most enduring nation — a borderless homeland of conscience.
