Kasim Kashgar is a Uyghur journalist, writer, and educator in exile. Born in Kashgar in East Turkistan (colonially called Xinjiang by China), he built one of the region’s largest private language schools, the Atlan Language Center, which educated more than 100,000 students before being forcibly shut down in 2017. Soon after, he fled with his family and sought asylum in the United States.
From 2019 to 2025, Kasim served as the first and only Uyghur journalist at Voice of America, publishing over 300 reports in English and Chinese on Uyghur repression, exile, and survival. He was also the subject of the 2023 VOA documentary From Fear to Freedom: A Uyghur’s Journey, which won a New York Festivals TV & Film Award.
He is now completing his memoir, Good That Mother Was Gone Before She Could Witness This: A Uyghur Son’s Search for Survival and Voice, a 24-chapter work blending personal testimony with broader reflections on memory, exile, cultural survival, and geopolitical resonance. His writing seeks to preserve Uyghur voices in the face of erasure and to connect personal narrative to universal questions of human rights and dignity.
X (Twitter): @kasimkashgar
Instagram: @kasimakashgar
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/kasimkashgar
