The recent collapse of the Hongqi Bridge in Tibet has once again drawn global attention to the environmental devastation and instability resulting from the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) aggressive and often unregulated development agenda in the region. What was meant to symbolize “progress” and connectivity instead became a tragic emblem of ecological neglect and political recklessness.

On November 12, 1944, the Second East Turkestan Republic (ETR) was proclaimed in the “Three Districts” of northern East Turkestan. A brief but powerful assertion of self-determination by the region’s Turkic peoples. Though its lifespan was short, it symbolized the enduring struggle of Uyghurs, Kazakhs, and Kyrgyz to exist as free nations on their own land. That hope was extinguished when the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) conquered and annexed East Turkestan in 1949. What followed was not modernization but a colonial occupation, systematically eroding the region’s cultures, ecosystems, and autonomy. The CCP’s so-called “development” has amounted to a slow-motion annihilation of people, environment, and identity hidden behind slogans of prosperity and unity.

There is a hush that falls when a people are told to forget their own names. On November 12 East Turkestan Independence Day Uyghur families light a small lamp in the heart and remember what the maps pretend not to see. They remember Kashgar's alleys, the call to prayer braided with market chatter, the long roads that cut the oases like lifelines through a thirsty land. They remember two brief republics-voices raised in 1933 and again in 1944-snuffed by the same current that now flows through detention centers, classroom scripts, and factory floors. Memory survives because mothers refuse to forget their children, and because elders refuse to let the language of their grandfathers die on their tongues.

November 12 marks East Turkestan Independence Day, commemorating the short-lived establishment of the East Turkestan Republics in 1933 and 1944 before their annexation by the People’s Republic of China in 1949. For Uyghurs and other Turkic peoples, the day symbolizes a continued struggle for cultural survival, religious freedom, and political recognition under Chinese Communist Party (CCP) rule.

The President of the Central Tibetan Administration (CTA), Mr. Penpa Tsering, sharply rejected Beijing’s claim over the Tibetan Buddhist reincarnation process during an address at the National Press Club on Thursday, calling China’s invocation of a “golden urn” system both historically unfounded and politically motivated.