Uyghur Diaspora Remembers Independence Activist Isa Yusuf Alptekin on Anniversary of Passing

RFA

December 29, 2020

Members of the Uyghur diaspora recently marked the 25th anniversary of the passing of Isa Yusuf Alptekin, one of the ethnic group’s most prominent intellectuals and a figure who devoted his life to independence from Beijing’s rule in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR).

Alptekin was born in Yengisar (in Chinese, Yingjisha) county, in what was then the Qing Dynasty’s Kashgar (Kashi) prefecture, in 1901. In late 1949, following the Chinese Communist invasion of the Uyghur region, he left China and eventually resettled in Turkey in 1954.

Read the full article at Radio Free Asia.