Aziz Isa Elkun

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.

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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.

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SPEAKER

Aziz Isa Elkun was born in East Turkistan (Uyghur Autonomous Region, China). He spent his childhood in Shahyar county which is located close to the Tarim River on the northern edge of the world’s second largest desert, the Taklamakan Desert. He graduated from Xinjiang University majoring in Chinese and Russian and languages. He has been living in London since 2001. He studied at Birkbeck University in London. He has published many poems, stories, and research articles in both Uyghur language and English. He has co-authored English language articles in Inner Asia and Central Asian Survey. He worked as Research Assistant on the “Sounding Islam China”, project based in SOAS, University of London, and conducted collaborative fieldwork in Central Asia for the project. In 2017, he published a Uyghur language research article arising from this fieldwork, titled “The Uyghurs are known in Central Asia for their laghmen”. He is an active member of the exile Uyghur Community and founder of a Uyghur music group – the London Uyghur Ensemble. Since September 2017, he has served as Secretary of the International PEN Uyghur Centre. From September 2018, he is working as a researcher on a British Academy Sustainable Development project “Uyghur Meshrep in Kazakhstan” based at SOAS, University of London.

*Webinar about “The genocide of the Uyghur Muslims in East Turkistan (China)” – organised by the UK Shia Ithna’ashari Community of Middlesex (SICM) & The Salaam Centre at 20:15 hrs London time on 29 January 2021. https://sicm.org.uk

Published by Elkun website:
http://www.azizisa.org/en/the-genocide-of-the-uyghur-muslims-in-east-tukestan-china/