On Thursday, October 2, 2025, CeLCAR, in collaboration with the Department of Central Eurasian Studies, the Inner Asian and Uralic National Resource Center, and the Center for the Study of the Middle East, will host Uyghur poet, filmmaker, and activist Tahir Hamut Izgil for a public lecture and discussion of his memoir Waiting to Be Arrested at Night: A Uyghur Poet’s Memoir of China’s Genocide (2023). During the talk, Izgil will discuss the events described in his award-winning book, recounting the political, social, and cultural destruction of his homeland, Xinjiang, and describing how his friends and colleagues gradually disappeared after being detained by the Chinese government in internment camps for Muslim minorities. Izgil will emphasize that his memoir is both a call for international awareness of the ongoing crisis and a tribute to the friends and fellow Uyghurs whose voices have been silenced.
