Aziz Isa Elkun

Jan 26, 2022

The road of no return

*A road through the Taklamakan Desert along the Tarim Basin region. In Uyghur, ‘takla makan’ means ‘you can get into it but can never get out’. CREDIT: Michal Sikorski / Alamy Stock Photo*

THE POEM ROSES is dedicated to the Uyghurs arrested and detained in the Chinese Communist Party’s 21st-century concentration camps in what is officially called the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region.

Its author, Uyghur poet, writer and academic Aziz Isa Elkun, grew up in Shahyar county, close to the Tarim river, and did not experience the freedom promised in the region’s colonial name.

Now 51, he was first arrested as a 16-year-old schoolboy in 1986 when his activism led to him being informally detained and interrogated. His home was ransacked and his earliest journals taken away. He was released after two days, but his parents’ defence of young naivety was unlikely to save him from a prison sentence in the future.

As the political climate worsened, with increasing government surveillance and censorship, it became increasingly certain that Aziz, as a young adult who favoured freedom of expression and association, would keep getting into trouble.

Uyghur People: In The Concentration Camps

by Muhammad Khan On Apr 4, 2021

Core Middle East: Uyghur People: In The Concentration Camps They Carry Out Various Types Of Torture And Abuse

Aziz Isa Elkun, is an academic at SOAS University of London who has lived in the UK for the past 20 years. Members of his family are victims of Chinese atrocities including his sister who was held in an internment camp for more than a year. He lives in exile in North London.

According to recent reports, Uyghur Muslims in China are being forced to denounce their faith, while China has destroyed 70 percent of mosques in the Uyghur Autonomous Region. The Uyghurs prefer to call their land ‘Uyghuristan.’

Since 2015, it has been estimated that as many as three million Uighurs have been detained in so called ‘re-education camps’. These are basically internment camps where mainly Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslims are brainwashed and indoctrinated in Communist ideology.

The Genocide No One’s Talking About: An Interview With Aziz Isa Elkun

Coremiddleeast On Oct 9, 2021

The shocking and sickening news of Uyghur Muslims are making rounds since 2017 but it hardly garners the attention of the mainstream media which it deserves. And as more and more incidents of mass murder, brutal tortures, rapes, and solitary confinements surface, one can only imagine the actual horrors faced by the Turkic origin Uyghur Muslims who are not only ignored and tacitly used by the US as a propaganda tool but are also being deliberately overlooked by the Muslim world.

Today, we’d try to find out from a victim of genocide himself, the persecution he and many like him deal with on a daily basis. We will try to shed more light on the political and social impact, this ethnic cleansing has, on our ever-changing world.

As an Uyghur in exile, advocating for his own people and trying to keep their identity alive, the journey of Aziz Isa Elkun from being a political refugee to an academic and human rights defender came at a heavy price.