Abdurehim Ötkür (1923–1995) was an author, translator, and poet. He is widely considered to be the father of modern Uyghur poetry. He was arrested in 1943 and detained as a political prisoner for two years for his support of the Three Districts Revolution. In 1949, he was placed under strict surveillance and was subsequently in and out of prison. He was restricted from writing for decades until the early eighties. From 1979 to his death, Ötkür worked as a scholar and administrator in the Institute of Literature Studies at the Academy of Philosophy and Social Sciences in Xinjiang.

Among his works are the poetry collections Qeshqer Kéchisi (Xinjiang People’s Press, 1980) and Ömür Menzilliri (Xinjiang Youths Press, 1985), and the novel Iz (Xinjiang People’s Press, 1985).

Rahima Mahmut is an Uyghur singer, human rights activist, and award-winning translator of the poignant prison memoir The Land Drenched in Tears (Hertfordshire Press, 2018) by Söyüngül Chanisheff. She has translated and composed songs from the work of imprisoned and exiled Uyghur poets. By translating these powerful works into English, Mahmut promotes the voices of those the Chinese regime has sought to repress.

Mahmut has worked closely with Uyghur survivors. She acted as a translator for the groundbreaking BBC report on sexual violence in the concentration camps and interpreted for fact witnesses during the Uyghur Tribunal. As an Uyghur human rights defender in exile, Mahmut is UK Director of the World Uyghur Congress, Executive Director of Stop Uyghur Genocide, and Advisor to the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China (IPAC).