Erkin Tawakkuli (艾尔肯·塔维克库力)
Erkin Tawakkuli (艾尔肯·塔维克库力) is a Uyghur biology teacher and former school principal from Urumqi, in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, who is serving a 12-year prison sentence after being detained in 2017. He is listed among political prisoners in current custody in the August 2026 monthly roster published by a Chinese rights-defense monitoring network.
Born in March 1970, Tawakkuli is a Uyghur man who lived in the Bahuliang community of Tuanjie Road subdistrict in Urumqi. He studied biology at North China Normal University (Capital Normal University) and graduated in 1994. He returned to Xinjiang and taught biology at Urumqi No. 14 Middle School — which merged with No. 6 Middle School in May 2004 to become Urumqi Senior High School — where he was repeatedly recognized as an outstanding teacher and later rose to become the school's principal.
In mid-2017, Tawakkuli was summoned and arrested by Urumqi police. According to the prisoner-of-conscience case record maintained by Chinese rights defenders, the detention followed years in which he had provided psychological care to students whose parents had been taken into custody, and had reassured students that their parents should be innocent and would ultimately be exonerated. When his case was tried around 2020, the court in Urumqi is reported to have treated those remarks as evidence that he was “covering for separatists,” and sentenced him to 12 years in prison for “helping ethnic separatism.” His term is reported to run until mid-2029, and he is reported to be held at Xinjiang Urumqi Prison.
Tawakkuli remains listed as in custody in the most recent available prisoner roster (August 2026). No official Chinese court document or state-media account of his case has been located; the case details below are drawn from rights-defense monitoring records and are attributed accordingly.
Not to be confused with Erkin Tursun (艾尔肯•吐尔逊) — a different person with a similar name.
Further reporting, source chronology, and source verification for this case are collected in the Media Profile & Archive.