Yalikun.Rouzi — rendered in most human-rights records as Yalqun Rozi (Uyghur: يالقۇن روزى; Chinese: 亚力坤·肉孜 / 牙里坤·肉孜) — is a Uyghur writer, literary critic, and former senior editor of the Xinjiang Education Press in Urumqi.
Born in March 1966 in Artush (Atush), in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, Rozi graduated from Xinjiang University in 1987 and worked as a reporter and editor before joining the Xinjiang Education Press. From 2001 to 2011 he served in its Uyghur Textbook Department, heading the committee that compiled and edited Uyghur-language literature textbooks for primary and middle schools across the region — more than 90 government-approved textbooks and teaching manuals. He retired in early 2015 due to illness.
On October 6, 2016, Rozi was taken from his home in Urumqi by police without a warrant, after weeks of summonses and questioning over the textbooks his committee had produced. He was formally arrested on December 30, 2016, and held for about two years in pre-trial detention. In January 2018, a court in Urumqi sentenced him to 15 years’ imprisonment for “inciting subversion of state power” — the prosecution treating the previously approved textbooks’ content as the basis of the charge. Several of his colleagues were sentenced alongside him; his supervisor Sattar Sawut reportedly received a death sentence with a two-year reprieve. In 2022, the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention concluded that Rozi’s detention was arbitrary, finding it lacked a legal basis and punished protected expression and cultural identity. (The Chinese government told the Working Group that he had been sentenced to life imprisonment — a claim that conflicts with the 15-year sentence reported by every other source and has not been independently verified.)
Rozi is married with two children. His son Kamaltürk Yalqun is a Uyghur-rights advocate based in the United States; his daughter Tumaris Yalqun brought the case to the UN Working Group. In 2026, Rozi was awarded the Graciela Fernández Meijide Human Rights Prize by CADAL, the Latin American Center for the Opening and Development of Latin America, in recognition of his work; family members and advocates accepted the award on his behalf.
Rights Defense Network’s Issue 131 (August 31, 2026) lists Yalikun.Rouzi — the roster’s Latin spelling — among reported current-custody political prisoners and prisoners of conscience. The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom’s victim database lists his status as “Not Released” as of September 2026. What is not known from public sources: the exact prison where he is serving his sentence, whether an appeal was filed, and the full text of the court’s judgment.