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 Elkun
President of Uyghur PEN Centre
Email: 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 is the “Uyghur Poems” anthology, which was published by the UK Everyman’s Library, an imprint of Penguin Random House, on 7 November 2023. He is a member of the English PEN. First Anthology of Uyghur Poetry in English. 1: Poets Sing of a Fight for Freedom; First Anthology of Uyghur Poetry in English. 2: The Time of Tragedy; Roses (published by Los Angeles Review of Books January 2022)
In September 2024, Elkun’s debut poetry collection “Çimenkuş” (A Flower Bird) translated from Uyghur to Turkish by Amina Wayit Sedef, was published by Önce Kitap Publishers in Türkiye. https://www.astanayayinlari.com/cimenkus-aziz-isa-elkun-siir-kitabi-2024
Since April 2025, he has also been serving as President of the Uyghur PEN Centre. He is a member of English PEN. You can read poetry, academic and other literary works from his personal blog: www.azizisa.org/en
Alisher Khalilov
Secretary General of Uyghur PEN Centre
Alisher Iminzhanovich Khalilov is a journalist, publicist, and publisher, was born on October 21, 1969, in the village of Uzynagash, Almaty Region, Kazakhstan. He completed high school in 1986 and graduated from the Energy Institute in 1992. In 2000, he earned a degree with honors from the Faculty of Journalism at the Almaty Institute of Journalism.
In 2000, Khalilov founded the publishing house MIR, which has been a prominent presence in Kazakhstan’s book and media market for over 25 years.
He is the founder and editor-in-chief of the national newspaper Nash Mir, which was published in Kazakhstan from 2000 to 2014. Since 2013, he has also served as founder and editor of IKHSAN, a full-color national magazine that remains in publication.
Additionally, he is the founder and director of the television channel Uyghurs of Kazakhstan, which focuses on the cultural and social life of the Uyghur community in the country.
Alisher Khalilov is married and has children. He is actively engaged in social and charitable initiatives.
Dr. Hakimjan Guliyev
Chair of the Board of Uyghur PEN Centre
Guliyev Hakimjan Elakhun Oghli is a renowned artist, cartoonist, playwright, and cultural studies scholar, was born in 1949 in Chilek County, Kazakhstan, he graduated from the N. Gogol School of Art in 1973 and later earned his degree from the Faculty of Art at the Abay Pedagogical Institute in 1982, where he also pursued his master’s studies. He worked in the Chilek County Education Department and later served as an arts methodologist at the State Institute for the Advancement of Teachers in Almaty.
Since 1982, Guliyev has been a member of the Union of Young Artists of the USSR, the Union of Artists of Kazakhstan, and the Kazakhstan State Academy of Architecture and Construction, where he conducted research and taught as an associate professor in the Faculty of Architectural History and Graphics.
In 2008, he became president of the DUNIYA ART (World Art) Contemporary Art Gallery, a public foundation dedicated to promoting Uyghur visual arts. He has organized numerous exhibitions and published nearly one hundred academic articles in both national and international journals.
In 2012, he was awarded the title of Candidate of Cultural Studies after defending his dissertation, The Revival and Development of Uyghur Visual Arts in Central Asia, at the National Academy of Sciences of the Kyrgyz Republic. He is recognized as the first Uyghur scholar in Central Asia to specialize in visual arts from an academic art history perspective.
In recent years, Guliyev has also earned acclaim as a writer and playwright. His plays – Miras Munchaq (Inherited Beads, 2009), Sirliq Kitab (Mysterious Book, 2011), and Dettikam (Betting, 2021) – have been staged at the Q. Ghojamiyarov Uyghur Theatre in Almaty. His satirical collections include Qelem Yurgukmu, Leqemmu? (Is the Pen Faster, or the Nickname?!, 2007) and Humor and Jokes (2015). His academic monograph on Uyghur visual arts was published in 2017.
The Uyghur PEN Centre stands for the rights of the Uyghur people, for their freedom of expression and freedom of write!