World Poetry Day

"[2024’s] World Poetry Day appears to offer little to celebrate across a region where popular reverence for poets sits uneasily with the censorship and repression of ruling communist and military governments that are hostile to free expression and political activism. But the bleak environment is not stopping poets from trying to play their historic roles in movements for freedom and social justice, poets told Radio Free Asia ahead of World Poetry Day, established in 1999 by UNESCO."

"Speaking to “Bitter Winter” on World Poetry Day, [Uyghur poet Aziz Isa] Elkun urged the world to remember the more than five hundred Uyghur poets sentenced to lengthy jail terms for their “crime of writing poems,” and the “severe extrajudicial persecution endured by Uyghur poets at the hands of the Chinese [Communist Party] government.” “Their only crime was writing poems in their God-given mother language, ,” he said."