East Turkestan or Xinjiang is in the world's focus due to Chinese oppression. Formally it is an autonomous region, but the autonomy is only in name, among other things the Chinese regime has carried out an active campaign against the Uyghur language. This language has been explored by Gunnar Jarring, among others. Sven Hedin traveled in these regions, and generations could follow his adventures through the book From pole to pole (1911). The Swedish Missionary Association carried out heroic missionary efforts from 1894 to 1938.

This country has gained a new affinity with Sweden through the poets who have found a haven here. Why have they come? It is the magnetism of freedom. Their homeland has never been a separate state, but that is precisely why their language is so important and their literature so vibrant. A new collection of Uyghur poetry by two poets is now available at Narin Publishing House. The title is My name – by Abdushukur Muhammet Qumtur as well Black fire – by Perhat Tursun.

Qumtur was born in 1967 and came to Sweden as a refugee in 2003. The life his poems describe is improbable for most of us – and yet real. In one poem he writes: As soon as we were born / our parents convinced us that the wall had ears, / later we found out that everything has ears.” He says: “… young people who played together when they were little and grew up / disappeared overnight as if kidnapped by ghosts…” Why? The answer is simple: “… they stood near the wall with ears.” The experience of coming to Sweden was dramatic and confusing: “They could not imagine a life without ears.” But the constant surveillance also extended to Sweden. “… some of them eventually became the wall’s ears.”

Uyghur poets often use symbols to describe their experiences. We can guess what the poet means by the words: “My hair has turned gray / but the night remained black.” The experience of oppression transforms a person. To another poet, Qumtur writes: “Tell them / about your withered past / your soul that is broken / with fear and terror.” But now he is here, don’t the walls have ears with us? It can be said, but it is not that simple. The flight from one’s own country comes at a high price: “When I left the country / the mountains would hug me / maybe they already knew / my future sorrow / and endless longing.” Later in the same poem, Qumtur writes: “When I left the country / I left everything I had / Only fear and the dictator’s theory are left in me.”

It is sometimes said that war is the worst thing that can happen to humanity. When you read Qumtur, you realize that there is something worse than war. It is oppression. War ends. Oppression lasts. It penetrates the human soul. Qumtur writes: “I want to get out of my body / and out of the faceless body of dictatorship / Even the night swallows me / In the merciless embrace of time.” Light itself has ceased to be light: “Sometimes there is no sun, sometimes there is no day / but those who have the sun in custody / sleep peacefully in the long night.”

Qumtur's poems give a sense of the power of the magnetism of freedom, the power with which the people of Eastern Europe freed themselves from Soviet oppression. The Uyghurs have not yet experienced anything like it. Qumtur writes: "We come from the time of failure / carrying the sweet dreams of withered leaves / in an embrace black as the fate of the night." For someone who comes with such a burden, Sweden is fantastic, more fantastic than we can ever imagine: "Freedom, / what a beautiful word / in the foreign land, in the foreign language..." But ten years in the land of freedom also contains a tragedy - forgetting one's own words, one's own people, "the distant land I came from."

Perhat Torsun was born in 1969. He received a doctorate in Turkology – Gunnar Jarring’s subject –, was taken to a “re-education camp” in 2018 and later sentenced to 16 years in prison. In 2022, he received the Tucholsky Prize from Swedish PEN. He is still imprisoned. With a powerful symbol, he describes the effect of oppression: “Everything was destroyed by the power of the cold wind…” There are no warm corners, where totalitarian oppression advances, no signs of hope to build on: “The icy embrace of the dark sky / swallows the stars, one by one.” But there is a choice, for each one: “He who walks towards absolute darkness / and he who walks towards the light, does not turn back.”

What remains after reading these two poets? Most of all, a word of love for Sweden: "Freedom / what a beautiful word..." This is something to defend.

The author is an associate professor at Åbo Akademi University, a priest in the Church of Sweden and a former field chaplain at Ing 2.