75 years of settler colonialism and oppression. Many of you may have heard about us only 7 or 8 years ago when the camps began, but this has been going on for decades, and each decade has brought a new set of policies and norms that have furthered the CCPās colonial project.
I recently learned that my uncle, Abdurazzaq Shamseden, who was sentenced to life as a political prisoner in 1999, was transferred to the notorious Tarim political prison located in the south of East Turkistan. This cuts off his very limited connection with my other relatives in the north. Mass arrests of young Uyghurs are still continuing. Two of my cousins have disappeared since 2016 and we still donāt know where they are. They were farmers. Here in Boston, many of my friends still have siblings and parents who were imprisoned, some as recently as this year. Many of those who had gone into re-education camps are now in forced labor factories, in actual prisons, dead from the torture they experienced in detainment, or living anxiously in Chinaās surveillance state.
I think one thing a lot of people donāt realise is that our struggles are interconnected. We were critically affected by the war on terror after 9/11 when China partnered with the US in their attack on the Muslim world. We are part of the supply chains and slave labor used to make your shoes, clothes, solar panels, computer chips, ketchup, and so on, from Nike to Temu to VW. Our people are the test subjects for the Chinese surveillance cameras that are being used by Israel in the West Bank. The environmental destruction being enacted for resource extraction, at the expense of the native people of the land, has caused the melting of glaciers and the desertification of farmland and cities in East Turkistan and contributes to the reduction of fresh water in Central Asia. The mass incarceration project and brainwashing of citizens is a common theme in all empires from the US to Russia to China, and itās our duty to stand together against the governments that seek to oppress and disempower and commit humanitarian crimes against all the innocent people of the world who stand in the way of their quest for power and capital.
Bit late, but needed to mark this special moment in December 2025 where we finally got three of us in a room together š„°
Canāt believe itās been 5 years of doing the @uyghuranthology with these two. So much chaos but it all comes together in the end. Warm vibes from the contributors and supporters who celebrate this achievement with us. Excited for the third volume :D
You can buy our first and second volumes using the links in @uyghuranthology bio
***EDIT: Address change!!!***
Peabody Museum
11 Divinity Ave
Level 5, Rm 52H
Cambridge MA 02138
Join us on Saturday December 13th at Harvard for the launch of Encounters Under the Mulberry Tree Vol II.
The event will feature a panel with all co-editors and readings from contributors.
Doors open at 2:30 pm and the program begins at 3:00 pm.
RSVP: bit.ly/harvardbooklaunch
Munawwar Abdulla is an Uyghur advocate, poet, and scientist born on unceded Kaurna land (Adelaide, Australia) and based in Massachusetts. She co-founded The Tarim Network, runs Uyghur Collective, and collaborates on projects with Uyghur rights organisations around the world. Her writings and literary translations have been published in places such as Modern Poetry in Translation, Asymptote, The Margins, and others.
Maidina Kadeer is a mixed Uyghur-Hui writer and editor, born in Ghulja and currently based in Montreal (TiohtiĆ :ke), Canada. She holds a BA in English Literature and Law and Society from Concordia University, with a focus on post- and neo-colonial literature. Her work explores Uyghur identity, history, and culture through cuisine, agriculture, and neo-colonialism. She has published works in projects like the Slavs and Tatarsā Contest of the Fruits (2021) and participates in panels and interviews on Agriculture and Food History to raise awareness about Uyghur culture.
Sonya Imin is a mixed Uyghur American scholar and multi-disciplinary creative who has worked on art and film projects across the US, Europe, and Central Asia. Growing up between the borderlands of the Uyghur homeland, broader Central Asia, and the midwestern United States, interrogations of belonging, home, and displacement influence the nature of her work. Currently based in Brussels, she is working on her doctoral research on Uyghur artistic production in the diaspora.
āØ n o v e m b e r āØ
1-6: cheesing over the release of Encounters Under the Mulberry Tree! Canāt believe we (@sny__mn and @swag_money_gains_ ) actually pulled through with volume 2 of @uyghuranthology . As far as I know this series is the only one where we in the diaspora platform the art and writing of others in our own community, specifically in English.
This book contains the work of 38 people from a dozen countries in 5 languages with the help of 13 translators. It was a lot of hard work over the course of 2 years and Iām so grateful that people have trusted us with their work and supported us after the first, very ambitious, volume.
Please head over to @uyghuranthology to purchase a copy!!
7-9: another ambitious first-timeā @kawsar_yasin_ was invited by the amazing team at @minaraspace to host an event in their super cute new space. This month was the anniversary of the establishment of our two East Turkistan Republics. So we decided ā Uyghur poetry throughout history! 18 poems, 8 readers, 5 videos of poetry performances, and a group song, along with dutar in the background, historical context for each poem from the 11th century to the present, and etken chay?? Still canāt believe we pulled it off.
10-13: these last few months I participated in a poetry workshop celebrating voices of diaspora by @letiprieberochapoems (completely free š«Ø) and was so inspired by the way these workshops were held and the community that was fostered. I actually wrote some poems this year which has been so good for my creative side and also therapy š lol and I love that it all transpired in a really pretty book, a reading event for all the participants, and me finding more poets to read!
14-16: itās been a while since Iāve really caught up with community and I love that Dr. Gulnar Eziz Yulghun š always brings us together to cook, eat and sing at her place during holidays - please register for her Uyghur and/or Chaghatay language courses at Harvard š. Dessert was with the Turkicstan group at the Azerbaijan Community Center. Seeing friends I havenāt seen in a while and discussing Surah Yaseen was very grounding :)
17: <3
18: attempted to read Uyghurche š
Thereās a girl on the train who is sketching me and a guy sitting a few seats away from me so I am trying to look nonchalant but boy am I exhausted. Just an old lady that keeps swallowing too much.
Sheās closed her book so I guess sheās not one of those influencers who give their drawings to the person they sketch šŖ
Someone did tell me what that says in Uzbek šš¼
Those were people in Shanghai on Urumqi Road (Nov 2022) trying to hold some sort of vigil for the people who died in the ĆrĆ¼mchi fires during Covid. They begin to chant political slogans after the police start coming to stop them. Maybe if the police didnāt come they wouldāve just left flowers there then went about their evenings. Instead, masses of police came (past midnight) to blockade the street and then arrest and beat so many of them, starting a China-wide, and worldwide, protest against the CCP. They say it was the biggest Chinese-citizen-led protests since Tiananmen. Certainly even in Boston they came out to protest with us and alot of them learned about Uyghurs because of itā¦ Iād only ever seen them protest in that amount to counter-protest us š«
