The Committee of Persecuted Writers and the Board of PEN Català have decided to award the 16th edition of the Veu Libre Prize to the Uyghur poet, filmmaker, and activist Tahir Hamut Izgil, one of the most important voices in Uyghur literature and one of the most compelling witnesses to the repression he suffers. Tahir Hamut Izgil was born in 1969 in the Xinjiang region of East Turkestan. From a young age, he stood out as an innovative poet in Uyghur literature, with a body of work influenced by literary modernism and symbolism. He studied at the Nationalities University of China and worked for years as a filmmaker and cultural creator. In the mid-1990s, he was arrested and sent to a labor camp for political reasons. In 2017, when the Chinese government began the mass internment of the Uyghur population, Izgil fled with his family to the United States. Since then he has lived in exile and has become one of the leading international voices denouncing the crimes committed against his people. His memoir, When they come to arrest me at midnight (Edicions 62, 2024), captures with precise and haunting writing the daily life in Urumqi during the early years of repression, and has been acclaimed by critics from media outlets such as The Guardian and The New York Times.