The Battle to Save the Uyghur Language From Extinction: China’s Plan to Erase a Civilization

June 11, 2025 | The Diplomat | Omer Kanat

June 15 marks Uyghur Language Day, which Uyghurs celebrate not only as a cultural event, but as a call to action, to ensure our language is not wiped out from the face of the earth. In light of China’s genocidal campaign to erase Uyghur identity, we know that preserving a language is preserving a people.

I left East Turkestan when I was just 9 years old. Fleeing political persecution in China, my family settled in Afghanistan. Like many displaced families, we faced the pressure to assimilate, to prioritize “practical” languages – Dari, Pashto, English. But my father made a rule: at home, we spoke only Uyghur. At school I learned everything else, but within the walls of our home, Uyghur was the language of family, and of memory. My parents’ dedication meant that I was able to immerse myself in our literature, philosophy, and history. Eventually, I became senior editor at Radio Free Asia’s Uyghur Service, despite spending no time in any classroom studying my native language. That’s the power of one generation refusing to let their language die.

But today, in our homeland, the Chinese government is doing everything possible to stop the Uyghur language from being passed down to the next generation. In East Turkestan, so-called “bilingual education” means children are taught in Chinese, not Uyghur. In state-run boarding schools, Uyghur children are forbidden from speaking their language or even using their own names. In short order, the children have lost the Uyghur language entirely, and this is no accident. This is linguistic erasure, a cultural genocide.

When we lose a language, we lose a culture. Chinese authorities have dismissed the Uyghur language as “out of step with the 21st century.” China has ended the use of Uyghur as a language of instruction, closed libraries, and brutally persecuted editors and publishers. 

First-hand testimony about book-burning is recounted in John Beck’s new release, “Those Who Should Be Seized Should Be Seized,” from Penguin Random House. Part of the job of the police, during the mass round-ups starting in 2016-2017, was to find all the non-Chinese-language books in the house. Police then took them outside to douse them with gasoline, and stayed to ensure that fire had consumed all the books.

The government’s campaign of destruction does not stop at China’s borders. Transnational repression of Uyghurs is ongoing. In February, Uyghur linguist Abduweli Ayup was suddenly barred from taking the stage as a speaker for a United Nations panel on language technologies in Paris.

In the diaspora, we have the duty to resist by empowering the next generation: in the family, in the community, and mobilizing strong international policy responses. Families play a key role. My daughter, who has spent nearly her whole life in the United States, is fluent because we speak Uyghur and read Uyghur books at home. 

In the community, we continue to publish Uyghur-language books, perform Uyghur music, and compose Uyghur poetry. We run weekly children’s Uyghur-language schools in cities around the world. Abduweli Ayup has launched a series of children’s books in the Uyghur language to help parents nurture the next generation of Uyghur speakers. The Uyghur Collective provides a platform for encouraging creative expression in our language, and preserving memory for the next generations.

But Uyghurs are not alone. Freedom-of-expression groups like PEN America include Uyghur poets like Tahir Hamut Izgil in programs on “writing as resistance.” Foundations and governments understand that concerted action is required when a powerful government is brutally crushing a people and erasing the very language that carries the civilizational heritage.

The shuttering of Radio Free Asia’s Uyghur Service, the only Uyghur-language broadcast anywhere in the world, is a terrible blow. The U.S. Congress is right to push strongly for its restoration.

Sanctions on the perpetrators of the atrocities are indispensable. But so is support for the survival of the Uyghurs as a people, through their language and culture. 

Uyghur Language Day matters, not just as celebration, but as defiance of the attempt to extinguish our civilization. The Chinese government wants to erase our culture by cutting out our tongue. But every Uyghur child who learns to speak our language, every poem composed, every song – these are part of a much larger battle. When we say, “Happy Uyghur Language Day” (Uyghur tili kununglargha mubarek bolsun), we are declaring our refusal to allow the genocidal aim to succeed. 

Read the article online: https://thediplomat.com/2025/06/the-battle-to-save-the-uyghur-language-from-extinction-chinas-plan-to-erase-a-civilization/