Uyghur PEN Board Members
Post Tagged with: "Aziz Isa Elkun"
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Bearing Witness to Imprisoned Souls
Aziz Isa Elkun’s Reflections On the Publication of the Uyghur Poetry AnthologyImprisoned Souls: Poems of Uyghur Prisoners in China Book Launch Speech by Aziz Isa Elkun16 December 2025, Yunus Emre Enstitüsü, London Throughout history, humanity has witnessed profound suffering from oppressive rulers and inhumane wars. The most powerful poetry, like other forms of artistic expression, often emerges from those who have endured unimaginable hardship: exploitation, poverty, invasion or genocide. As a reflection of the Uyghurs’ social and political struggles, their poetry has consistently expressed their desire to live freely in their homeland. Themes of love, survival, and the resolute determination for a better future have always been central to their work. Since completing my first major translation project, the anthology Uyghur Poems, published by the UK’s Everyman’s Library in October 2023, I have become deeply engaged in exploring Uyghur poetry further. My focus has increasingly shifted to the persecuted Uyghur poets. As I learned more about the ongoing persecution and extrajudicial punishments imposed on Uyghur intellectuals, particularly the mass detention, arrest, and disappearance of Uyghur poets, I became increasingly restless. The weight of these atrocities pressed upon me, and I felt a deep, unwavering need to bring their poetic voices to the wider world. The simple act of writing poems had led to their persecution, and I knew that their precious works must not be lost to silence. It became my mission to translate these poems and preserve the voices of those who are no longer able to speak. The knowledge that many of my poet friends are languishing in Chinese prisons has haunted me daily. Despite the challenges of obtaining reliable information about the detained and imprisoned Uyghur poets, I began my investigation in 2017. I began the painstaking task of collecting their poems from published books, magazines and online sources, […]
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Uyghur PEN Centre’s New Leadership Team
On April 16, 2025, at the Mir Publishing House office in Almaty, Kazakhstan, members of the Uyghur PEN has elected their new leadership team. The newly elected Executive Committee of the International Uyghur Centre is as follows: Aziz Isa ElkunPresident of Uyghur PEN CentreEmail: penuyghur@gmail.com Aziz Isa Elkun is a poet, author and academic. He was born in Shayar County in Uyghuristan (East Turkistan), and graduated from Urumchi University. He has been living in London since 2001, where he studied at Birkbeck University. He has published many poems, stories, and research articles in both Uyghur and and English. Since 2013, he has participated in various research projects on Uyghur culture and music as a researcher at SOAS University of London, including the ‘Sounding Islam China‘ project in 2013 and the ‘Uyghur Meshrep in Kazakhstan’ project in 2018. He is an active member of the exiled Uyghur community and the founder of the Uyghur music group London Uyghur Ensemble, established in 2006. In early 2019, he produced a short documentary film, “An Unanswered Telephone Call”, depicting the ongoing sufferings of his family after China pursued a total blockade of international telephone calls between Uyghurs at home and abroad since 2017. He has co-authored English language articles with Rachel Harris, in Inner Asia and Central Asian Survey (‘Invitation to a Mourning Ceremony’: Perspectives on the Uyghur Internet and ‘Islam by Smartphone: the changing sounds of Uyghur religiosity’) and ‘Islam by smartphone: reading the Uyghur Islamic revival on WeChat’, Central Asian Survey 38(1), 2019, 61-80; co-authored a research report with Rachel Harris published by Uyghur Human Rights Project February 2023 (The Complicity of Heritage: Cultural Heritage and Genocide in the Uyghur Region); a book chapter published by The Routledge in 2022, “The Routledge Companion to Music and Human Rights” (‘Music, Terror, and Civilizing Projects in China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region’). One of his major editing and poetry translation works […]
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Uyghur PEN Centre President
Aziz Isa Elkun is a Uyghur author, poet, writer, and academic. He was born in Uyghuristan (East Turkistan) and grew up in Shahyar County, near the Tarim River on the northern edge of the Taklamakan Desert, where he completed his primary and secondary education. From 1988 to 1991, he studied Russian and Chinese languages at Xinjiang University in Urumqi. Shortly after graduating, he was persecuted by Chinese authorities due to his political activities during his high school and university years. In 1999, he fled East Turkistan and in August 2001, resettled in the United Kingdom. Since then, he has pursued further studies and continues to live in the UK with his family. In 2009, he graduated from Birkbeck, University of London, with a degree in Web Development and Multimedia. Elkun is an active member of the exiled Uyghur community and the founder of the Uyghur music group London Uyghur Ensemble, established in 2006. Since 2014, he has been involved in various research projects on Uyghur culture at SOAS University of London. From September 2017 to October 2022, he served as Secretary of the PEN Uyghur Centre and as Director of the Uyghur PEN Centre’s Revitalisation Project. From September 2023, he has been working as a researcher on a UK Research and Innovation-funded project, Maqam Beyond Nation, based at SOAS, University of London. Since April 2025, he has also been serving as President of the Uyghur PEN Centre. In addition, he is a member of English PEN. Published books: Selected Articles and Contributions: Some Research articles and Opinion pieces that reflect the ongoing China’s Uyghur Genocide were published on various websites, newspapers, and magazines: Documentary Film: In early 2019, he produced a short documentary film, “An Unanswered Telephone Call”, depicting the ongoing sufferings of his family after China pursued a total blockade of international telephone calls […]
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Uyghur Poems
Edited by Aziz Isa ElkunTranslated by Aziz Isa Elkun and othersPublished: 26/10/2023EVERYMAN’S LIBRARY POCKET POETSPenguin Random House An unprecedented collection of poems spanning the rich two-thousand-year cultural legacy of the Uyghur people of Central Asia. EVERYMAN’S LIBRARY POCKET POETS. The Uyghurs have a long and glorious history of poetry, dating from the oral epics of the second century BCE through the elegant love poetry of the medieval period and up to the present moment -and much of it has never before been translated into English. Uyghur poetry reflects the magnificent natural landscapes at the heart of the Silk Road region, with its endless steppes, soaring mountain ranges, and vast deserts, as well as its turbulent history. Turkic, Sufi, and Persian influences have shaped the poetic tradition over the centuries, and more recently the modernism of the twentieth century left its mark as well. In the face of the systematic persecution of the Uyghurs in China today, which has driven many of their poets into exile, including the editor and translator of this volume, Aziz Isa Elkun, who lives in London. Uyghur Poems is not only a remarkable one-volume tour of an ancient and vibrant poetic tradition but also a vital witness to a threatened culture. EVERYMAN’S LIBRARY POCKET POETSPenguin Random Househttps://www.penguin.co.uk/books/457502/uyghur-poems/9781841598307 Uyghur Poems Amazon UK: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Uyghur-Poems-Everymans-Library-Pocket/dp/1101908343 _________________________________
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Keeping the Uyghur Culture Alive in Exile
by RUTH INGRAM 03/03/2021 Non-Chinese culture is repressed or reduced to a tourist attraction in Xinjiang. But exile and sorrow have produced a flurry of poetry and creativity among the diaspora. Strange bedfellows; tear gas and poets, tasers and writers, electric cattle prods, handcuffs and artists; folklorists and pepper spray. But when orders come down from the top to break Uyghur lineage, break their roots, break their connections, and break their origins, and CCP procurement figures for a secret network of transformation through education camps include instruments of torture, the pieces of the puzzle start to make sense. No one willingly walks into the annihilation of their culture. Unreasonable force will be part of the deal. Not content with rounding up so-called “holy warriors,” “splittists” and “the politically dangerous” for Beijing’s euphemistically named “vocational training” program, more than 400 academics have also been dragged into the black hole of internment and the disappeared since the start of a program of cultural annihilation, which began in 2017. Unlike most Uyghurs who were corralled into 24/7 Chinese language classes and political indoctrination, these university professors, writers, poets, singers, and dancers are fluent Mandarin speakers and often loyal Party members. Accused of being two-faced traitors and half-hearted supporters of the regime, these intellectuals’ only crime is their love for Uyghur history and culture, and their desire to see their nation flourish. They have all without exception vanished, and with them a vital bridge to the intangible cultural heritage they embody. Uyghur writers, poets, and academics gathered online last week to commemorate UNESCO’s International Mother Language Day and the 100-year anniversary of PEN International, a worldwide association of writers, founded in London in 1921 to promote literature and defend freedom of expression worldwide. Members of the Uyghur PEN Centre, one of more than one hundred and fifty mother tongue groups around the world, […]
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Uyghur PEN Centre Online Revitalisation Project
AZIZ ISA ELKUN Director of Uyghur PEN Centre Online Revitalisation ProjectBoard member of Uyghur PEN CentreEmail: aziz.isaa@gmail.com Aziz Isa Elkun is a writer, poet and academic. He was born in Shayar County in East Turkistan. He graduated from Urumchi University. He has been living in London since 2001. In London, he studied at Birkbeck University. He has published many poems, stories, and research articles in both Uyghur and and English language (www.azizisa.org). He has co-authored English language articles in Inner Asia and Central Asian Survey (‘Invitation to a Mourning Ceremony’: Perspectives on the Uyghur Internet and Islam by smartphone: reading the Uyghur Islamic revival on WeChat’). From 2013 to 2020, he worked as a Research Assistant on the “Sounding Islam China” and “Uyghur Meshrep in Kazakhstan” (www.meshrep.uk) projects based at SOAS, University of London. In 2012, he published his first book “Journey from Danube river to the Orkhun valley” in Uyghur. He is an active member of the exile Uyghur Community and founder of a Uyghur music group – the London Uyghur Ensemble. From September 2017 to October 2020, he has served as Secretary of the PEN International Uyghur Centre (www.uyghurpen.org). Since January 2021, he is working as a Director for the Uyghur PEN Centre Online Revitalisation Project. Uyghur PEN Centre Online Revitalisation Project As we all know, the current situation of the Uyghurs in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region of China is critical and deteriorating. Uyghur writers, poets, academics and artists who have tried to exercise their basic rights to freedom of expression have become primary targets and victims of China’s Xi Jinping’s genocidal policies in the region. The Uyghur PEN Centre, a subordinate diaspora PEN Centre of the PEN International family, has encountered many hurdles over the past 10 years like many other exile writers, however we are determined to continue our work and give […]
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