Abduweli Ayup

He is linguist, poet and activist, he is a leading advocate for the cultural and linguistic rights of the Uyghur people. He studied Turkic literature and holds a master’s degree in linguistics. He lectured in Northwest Minzu University and Xinjiang University for 9 years and in 2011 he opened language schools and kindergartens in Ürumchi and Kashgar, China's Xinjiang Uyghur region. He was interrogated and harassed by the Chinese authorities until his detention in 2013 in a "re-education" camp. In 2015 he fled to Turkey with his family where he collected other testimonies, translating information, leaked lists and other evidence about the Uyghur crisis into English. He currently lives in Norway as a writer-in-residence through the ICORN program and, from exile, continues his activism. He is the founder of Uyghur Hjelp, a non-profit organization for human rights protection, documentation and humanitarian aid for Uyghurs in the diaspora. He has opened Uyghur schools in several countries and promotes the publication of literary works and textbooks for children in this language. His prison memoirs, published in Turkish and Uyghur, are The Black Land (Selkie Publishing House, 2024). In 2023, he was awarded the Linguapax 2023 International Prize in recognition of his activism for the preservation and transmission of the Uyghur language.