Chinese atrocities: Uighur poetry culture on verge of extinction

According to poets and researchers, Uighur poetry is now on the verge of extinction as the Chinese government detains and silences poets, The Guardian reported.

However, the community, that is staying abroad, is currently fighting to keep the art form alive as authorities double down on their campaign to assimilate minority populations of Xinjiang into mainstream Han Chinese culture.

Poems have remained an integral part of the Uighur culture.

Children were taught in school and encouraged to write. At book markets, volumes of poetry often made up the bulk of the selection. Most district and county newspapers featured sections for residents to publish their poems, The Guardian reported.

Writers are currently even posting their most recent verses on their WeChat accounts. 

“Every generation has their own poets and their own styles and comes up with something newer. It’s almost like pop music. If you are a really good poet, you are almost as popular as the most popular singer,” Fatimah Abdulghafur, a Uighur poet and activist who grew up in Kashgar and now lives in Australia told The Guardian.

In 2017 as the new crackdown got underway, book stores were shut and a once vibrant publishing industry ground to a halt, the newspaper reported.

Tahir Hamut Izgil, a poet and filmmaker, was living in Urumqi when he got word from family in southern Xinjiang of Uighurs being rounded up.

Having grown up in Kashgar he had experienced the various “strike hard” campaigns but this time was different. 

“Everyday we heard of people being taken, of schools and government offices being turned into camps, of people’s passports being taken,” he told the newspaper.

Among the detained poets are cultural giants like Abdurehim Heyit, a singer, musician and poet, whose rumoured death in 2019 caused such an outpouring that authorities released a video of him affirming he was alive but under investigation, the British newspaper reported.

Who are Uighur Muslims?

Uighur Muslims are a Turkic minority ethnic group originating from and culturally affiliated with the general region of Central and East Asia. It is now widely publicized that their human rights are crushed by China and they were sent to "re-education camps" by the communist regime in Beijing.

The Uighurs are recognized as native to the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region of the People's Republic of China.

An American representative at the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination said in 2018 that the committee had received many credible reports that 1 million ethnic Uighurs in China have been held in "re-education camps" by the Chinese authorities.