As Beijing continues its years-long genocide of the Uyghur ethnic minority, Salih Hudayar, the prime minister of the East Turkistan government-in-exile, told Breitbart News that it is "unbefitting" for President Joe Biden to meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping.
Biden and Xi met in Bali, Indonesia Monday, marking their first in-person encounter since Biden took office. It also came ahead of Tuesday's G20 summit opening.
Following the meeting, both the White House and Chinese Foreign Ministry readouts stressed that the leaders discussed cooperation on issues like climate change and minimizing conflict in economic competition.
While the White House claimed the president touched on the Chinese government "practices in Xinjiang, Tibet, and Hong Kong, and human rights more broadly," it did not go into further detail or mention the ongoing genocide in East Turkistan, which China calls the "Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region."
The Chinese Foreign Ministry's version of events does not mention Biden raising the subject of human rights. Instead, the ministry claims it was Xi who "noted that freedom, democracy and human rights are the common pursuit of humanity and also the unwavering pursuit of the CPC [Communist Party of China]."
"East Turkistanis disapprove of this meeting," Hudayar, the prime minister of the East Turkistan government-in-exile, told Breitbart on Monday. "It’s unbefitting of President Biden — the leader of the Free World — to meet with Chinese dictator Xi Jinping and talk about cooperation while China is carrying out an active genocide against Uyghurs and other Turkic peoples in East Turkistan."
When asked on what grounds such a meeting would be appropriate, Hudayar said, "The only way meeting with the genocidal Chinese dictator would be acceptable is if President Biden had made it clear to Xi that the U.S. and the Free World will no longer allow China to carry out genocide with impunity."
"The East Turkistani people have long looked up to the U.S. as a beacon of hope and protectors of the oppressed," Hudayar continued. "We have long been pleading with the U.S.-led Free World to intervene and end China's ongoing campaign of colonization, genocide, and occupation and support East Turkistan's efforts to regain its freedom and independence in the same way the Free World is supporting Ukraine."
A formerly sovereign nation currently under Chinese Communist Party rule, East Turkistan is home to the majority of the world's ethnic Uyghurs and sizable Kazakh, Kyrgyz and other Muslim-majority Turkic populations.
According to the government-in-exile, since 2014, the Chinese government has engaged in a genocide campaign that has resulted in the internment of millions of Uyghurs, Kazakhs, Kyrgyz, and other Turkic peoples in concentration camps, prisons, and labor camps.
Recent U.N. findings show that Uyghur and other Turkic detainees were subjected to forced indoctrination, torture, rape and sexual abuse, as well as organ harvesting.
Biden later told reporters he felt confident that his meeting with Xi had gone well.
"I absolutely believe there need not be a new Cold War," said Biden, according to Breitbart. "I’m not suggesting this is Kum-ba-ya … [but] I think we understand each other, which is the most important thing that can be done."
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