A group representing the Uyghur people is calling on the International Criminal Court (ICC) to pursue charges against Chinese President Xi Jinping after the court issued an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin.
"We call on the International Criminal Court to act and hold Chinese leader Xi Jinping accountable for the ongoing genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Turkic peoples," Prime Minister Salih Hudayar of the East Turkistan Government in Exile said in a Saturday press release.
"The International Criminal Court must uphold justice and fulfill its commitment to ‘Never Again’ by investigating the ongoing genocide and arresting Xi Jinping for his direct role in this Holocaust-like genocide in the 21st century."
HACKED XINJIANG FILES REVEAL CHINA'S UYGHUR GENOCIDE DETAILS: 'JUST KILL THEM'The press release comes the same week the ICC issued an arrest warrant for Putin and Russian official Maria Alekseyevna Lvova-Belova for their alleged involvement in war crimes during the invasion of Ukraine.
The ICC said that Putin "is allegedly responsible for the war crime of unlawful deportation of population (children) and that of unlawful transfer of population (children) from occupied areas of Ukraine to the Russian Federation."
UN REPORT CITES ALLEGED ‘PATTERNS OF ABUSE’ IN CHINA'S TREATMENT OF UYGHUR MINORITYRussian Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokeswoman Maria Zakharova dismissed the arrest warrant shortly after it was issued.
"Russia is not a party to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court and does not bear obligations under it," Zakharova said.
"Russia does not cooperate with this body, and possible 'recipes' for arrest coming from the International Court of Justice will be legally null and void for us."
The press release from the exiled Uyghurs outlines similar allegations of forced deportations of ethnically Turkic people.
"The new evidence highlighted that upwards of 3,000 Uyghurs had been forcibly deported from Tajikistan with an additional 4,000 from Kyrgyzstan."
Fox News Digital reached out to China's U.S. Consulate and the ICC for comment but did not immediately receive a response.
"The ICC is presently considering all of the evidence we have submitted in order to decide on opening an ICC investigation," Hudayar told Fox News Digital in a statement.
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