The World Uyghur Congress (WUC), an international coalition of Uyghurs who fled persecution in China, issued a statement Wednesday that confirmed a man detained in Sweden on suspicion of spying for China was a longtime spokesman for the group.
The suspect, Dilshat Reshit, began serving as the Chinese-language spokesman for the WUC in 2004. He held the post right up to his arrest last weekend, when the WUC held an emergency meeting to dismiss him.
According to Swedish prosecutors, Reshit is suspected of “having illegally collected information and intelligence on people in the Uyghur environment on behalf of the Chinese intelligence service.”
The WUC said it became aware of Reshit’s arrest on Wednesday.
“Recent arrests in various countries and Western parliaments have highlighted the increasing intrusiveness and reach of Chinese espionage networks,” the group noted.
“In this context, it is important to recall media reports and credible investigations revealing the existence of unofficial Chinese ‘police stations’ across Europe, which have been allegedly used to monitor, intimidate, and repress overseas communities – including Uyghurs, Tibetans, Hong Kongers, and others,” the statement said.
The WUC said it has “implemented internal counterintelligence measures,” including the tightest possible vetting for its officials, but “we lack the institutional and financial resources to confront the full scale and sophistication of transnational repression on our own.”
“We therefore call on all governments and host countries to ensure effective cooperation between their counterintelligence services and Uyghur organizations. Enhanced coordination and institutional support are urgently needed to protect vulnerable communities and ensure that legitimate human rights work can continue free from foreign intimidation and interference,” the WUC said.
China’s machinery of transnational repression has become pervasive, raising alarm in governments around the world. The past few years saw the exposure of Chinese “police stations” in Europe and the United States, outposts of Chinese Communist repression that specialized in monitoring and threatening dissidents who live abroad.
Salih Hudayar, foreign and security minister for the East Turkestan Government-in-Exile (ETGE), said on Wednesday it was dismaying to see a founding member of the WUC exposed as a Chinese spy.
“It confirms what we’ve warned for years: the Chinese Communist Party has deeply infiltrated Uyghur organizations and communities to derail the East Turkistani independence movement from within,” Hudayar said.
“East Turkestan” is the Uyghurs’ traditional name for their homeland, which was invaded and conquered by China several times in the 18th and 19th Centuries, and formally annexed under the name “Xinjiang” in 1994. Many Uyghurs consider Xinjiang, which simply means “new territory” in Chinese, to be a name born of colonialist oppression.
“For over two decades, a man now accused of working with Chinese intelligence stood at the front of an organization claiming to represent our people. This is not a failure of vetting – it is deliberate,” Hudayar said.
“This is not merely espionage. It is political warfare,” he said.
The ETGE argued on Friday that Chinese infiltration has “significantly weakened global Uyghur advocacy” by weakening calls for East Turkestani independence, in favor of “more moderate calls for human rights and cultural autonomy.”
“Uyghurs continue to face mass arbitrary detentions, forced sterilisations, systemic forced labor, severe religious restrictions, and extensive transnational repression,” the ETGE said.
