By Tatiana A. Anikeeva Uyghur Initiative Papers No. 3, October 2014 Attributed to the ancient Uyghur literary tradition are some texts written in Uyghur and Arabic script in the 8th-9th centuries and some literary monuments written a couple of centuries later in the 11th. These texts are as a rule connected with the main, established religious traditions (though some of them have only jural or household con ...

Literature of the Uyghurs in Kazakhstan, having common roots with Uighur literature of Eastern Turkestan (Xinjiang-Uighur Autonomous Region of China), has evolved by its own historical way. It has been influenced by all social and political perturbations in Soviet society from the first five-year plans up to perestroika. The mass repressions of the late 1930s adversely affected it. The best sons of the peop ...

Joshua L. Freeman The Uyghur people, who live primarily in the Xinjiang region of northwestern China, have for many centuries held poetry and poets in high esteem. While many aspects of Uyghur life have been altered by social, cultural, and political change over the last century, the importance of poetry in Uyghur culture remains undiminished. Perhaps that’s why modernist poetry, which burst onto the Uyghur ...

Free the Wild Pigeon Free the Wild Pigeon is a campaign to call attention to the plight of Nurmuhemmet Yasin, author of the fable Wild Pigeon. Nurmuhemmet was sentenced to 10 years' prison for writing this tragic but beautiful tale of a bird who sets out on a journey of discovery, but is captured and caged by humans. In the end, the pigeon commits suicide rather than live a life in captivity. Chinese author ...

Arienne M. Dwyer This study explores Chinese language policy and language use in Inner Asia, as well as the relation of language policy to the politics of Uyghur identity. Language is central to ethnic identity, and official language policies are often overlooked as critical factors in conflict over ethnic nationalism. In Chinese Inner Asia, any solution to ethnic conflict will include reallinguistic and cu ...