Source: Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organization

Press Release

For Immediate Release

August 21, 1995

The Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organization (UNPO) strongly condemns continued Chinese nuclear tests at Lop Nor in Eastern Turkestan (also known as Xinjiang in Chinese), a founding member of UNPO.

Ironically, the test conducted on August 17, 1995, came one day after six Greenpeace activists staged a demonstration at Tienanmin square, Bejing, calling on the Chinese leadership to stop nuclear tests in Eastern Turkestan. It also comes at a time when negotiations are taking place in Geneva on a total ban on nuclear testing. The Lop Nor test site is in the Southern part of East Turkestan, a formerly independent nation annexed by China in 1949, and inhabited mainly by Uighurs, a Turkic people of Central Asia.

China's nuclear tests in Eastern Turkestan for more than three decades have produced serious ecological damage and harm to the local population. Drinking water is polluted, food supplies are contaminated and millions of animals throughout the region are affected.

Erkin Alptekin, the chairman of the Eastern Turkestani Union in Europe said: "Peaceful demonstrations by the people of Eastern Turkestan living at home and abroad demanding the closure of the Lop Nor test site and an end to all nuclear testing have so far achieved no results. The people of eastern Turkestan continue to suffer. It has been reported that more than 200,000 people died because of radio active fall-outs. Ten percent of the population is ill with cancer, and babies are born with horrible deformations. We are encouraged by the Greenpaece demonstration in Bejing. We appreciate the international reaction towards the French testing in the Pacific. We think that the same kind of sensivity must be shown towards the Chinese testing in Eastern Turkestan. Let us hope that the Greenpeace demonstration in Bejing was not in vain."

An Uighur interviewed by the Baltimore Sun in Urumchi, the capital of Eastern Turkestan after the previous nuclear test conducted on May 15, 1995, said: "The Chinese use us as Guinea pigs for tests. The tests never take place where the Chinese live, only where Uighurs live. It is racist."

The UNPO urges the nuclear powers and other governments to pressure the Chinese Government to stop nuclear testing in Eastern Turkestan. UNPO is an organization of nations and peoples not adequately represented in the such as the United Nations.

For more information please contact Arjan Zoodsma or Robin Sluyk, Media and Information Centre at the UNPO Office The Hague, The Netherlands, tel. +31 70 3603318, fax +31 70 3603346, e-mail: unpol@antenna.nl. For latest press releases you can check the UNPO e-mail, APC conference . [UNPO] MIC/1995/PR.12