East Turkistan's Right to Sovereignty: Decolonization and Beyond [Paperback]

This study examines the relationship between the Peoples Republic of China and the people of East Turkistan; specifically, between Chinas settler colonialism and East Turkistans independence movement. What distinguishes this study is its dispassionate analysis of the East Turkistans national dilemma in terms of international law and legal precedent as well as the prudence with which it distinguishes substantial evidence from claims of Chinas crimes against humanity and genocide in East Turkistan that have not been fully verified yet.

The author demonstrates how other states have ignored the nature of that relationship and so avoided asking key questions about East Turkistan that have been asked and answered about other occupied and colonized states. The book analyzes this situation and provides the tools and the argument to understand East Turkistans actual status in the international community. Currently, the world has bought into Chinas rhetoric about stability and fighting extremism, and international organizations accept Chinas presentation of Uyghurs and other people as minorities within a Chinese nation-state. This book instead shows East Turkistan can correctly be understood through history and law as an illegally occupied territory undergoing genocide. It also makes the case that East Turkistani people had basis advancing territorial claim for independence.

This book makes a very significant contribution to the literature on the Uyghur crisis bringing together a wide range of materials in Chinese, Uyghur language, and English. Rukiye Turdush is one of the most authoritative and articulate scholars of Uyghur affairs in the world today The facts of the history and contemporary reality of the Uyghurs are highly charged emotionally, touching on multiple forms of human injustice including genocide. Nevertheless, Ms. Turdush maintains a prudent and rational tone basl/