Leadership

 

Abdulhakim Idris is the Executive Director of the Center for Uyghur Studies, a Washington D.C. – based think tank. He is the author of the book “Menace: China’s Colonization of the Islamic World & Uyghur Genocide”, which is published in Arabic, English, Indonesian, and Turkish. 

Idris was born in the southern city of Hotan in East Turkistan in 1968. He was educated in Islamic studies and Arabic language at the Islamic schools (Madrasa) in Hotan before leaving his hometown in 1986 to study Islam in Egypt at Al-Azhar University. After he studied in Cairo, he settled in Munich, Germany, in 1990 as one of the first Uyghurs to seek asylum in Europe. He studied Industrial Management at the Deutsche Angestellten-Akademie (DAA) in Munich.

Idris is one of the founding members of the East Turkistan Union in Europe, first established in 1991 in Germany as the first Uyghur organization in Europe. Mr. Idris also co-founded the World Uyghur Youth Congress (WUYC) in 1996 and the East Turkistan National Congress in 1999. He was the Treasurer and Chairman of the Executive Committee for the World Uyghur Youth Congress. In 2004, Mr. Idris and a dozen other Uyghur advocates in the diaspora co-founded the World Uyghur Congress (WUC). From 2004 to 2021, Idris has served in several positions including as Treasurer, Vice-Chairman of the Executive Committee, Director of the Refugee Center, and Inspector General of the WUC. Additionally, he served as one of the Board of Directors for the Uyghur American Association in Washington DC after he moved to the United States from Germany in 2009. In 2017, Mr. Idris and his wife Rushan Abbas founded the non-profit organization Campaign for Uyghurs.

Idris has become a prominent voice for the Uyghur people. he continues his struggle to stop the Uyghur Genocide by publishing articles and participating in various conferences both in America and abroad. He was summoned as an expert witness in the Uyghur Tribunal held in London, the UK in September of 2021, which concluded that China had committed crimes against humanity and Genocide against Uyghurs, Kazakhs, and other Turkic Muslims. He is especially focused on cultivating support from the Islamic world to protect the people of East Turkistan and to raise awareness of the propaganda efforts of the CCP.

Idris currently lives in Virginia. He speaks English, German, Arabic, Turkish and Uyghur