Perhat Tursun

Perhat Tursun (1969-) is one of the foremost living Uyghur language poets. Born and raised in Atush, a city in China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, he began writing poetry in middle school, then branched into prose in college. Tursun has been described as a “self-professed Kafka character.” Unfortunately, Tursun was “disappeared” into a Chinese “reeducation” concentration camp where extreme psychological torture is the norm. According to a disturbing report he has also been “hospitalized.” According to John Bolton, when Donald Trump learned of these “reeducation” concentration camps, he told Chinese President Xi Jinping it was “exactly the right thing to do.” Trump’s excuse? “Well, we were in the middle of a major trade deal.”

Asylum seekers, will you recognize me among the mountain passes’ frozen corpses?
Can you identify me here among our Exodus’s exiled brothers?
We begged for shelter but they lashed us bare; consider our naked corpses.
​When they compel us to accept their massacres, do you know that I am with you?

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