The East Turkistan Government in Exile (ETGE) commemorated the seventy-sixth anniversary of China’s invasion and occupation of the sovereign Republic of East Turkistan, observing October 12 as the National Day of Mourning.

According to the ETGE, on this day in 1949, just eleven days after the founding of the People’s Republic of China, Chinese Communist forces launched a military assault on the independent Republic of East Turkistan. The campaign culminated on December 22, 1949, when Chinese forces overthrew the East Turkistan Republic, marking the beginning of what the ETGE describes as a “brutal and prolonged campaign of colonisation, genocide, and occupation” that continues to this day.

In a press release issued, the ETGE condemned China’s actions as “crimes of aggression, genocide, a

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