Khabib Yunich ( zh, c=海比甫玉尼奇; tt-Cyrl, Юнич Хәбиб Фазылҗан улы, translit=Yüniç Xäbib Fazılcan ulı, ; ug, يۈنىچ خەبىب فازىلجانۇلى, in Uyghur; 1905–1945) was a politician, pedagogue and journalist in the
Xinjiang province
Xinjiang Province is a historical administrative area of Northwest China, between 1884 and 1955.
Periods during which various boundaries of Xinjiang Province have been defined include:
* Xinjiang Province (Qing) (1884–1912).
* Xinjiang Provi ...
of
Western China
Western China (, or rarely ) is the west of China. In the definition of the Chinese government, Western China covers one municipality (Chongqing), six provinces (Sichuan, Guizhou, Yunnan, Shaanxi, Gansu, and Qinghai), and three autonomous region ...
. He was an ethnic
Tatar
The Tatars ()Tatar in the Collins English Dictionary is an umbrella term for different and a Muslim.
After returning to China from
Turkey
Turkey ( tr, Türkiye ), officially the Republic of Türkiye ( tr, Türkiye Cumhuriyeti, links=no ), is a list of transcontinental countries, transcontinental country located mainly on the Anatolia, Anatolian Peninsula in Western Asia, with ...
, where he studied, he organized the first
Uyghur language
The Uyghur or Uighur language (; , , , or , , , , CTA: Uyğurçä; formerly known as Eastern Turki), is a Turkic language written in a Uyghur Perso-Arabic script with 8-11 million speakers, spoken primarily by the Uyghur people in the Xin ...
gazette in the Ili district of Xinjiang and was its editor from 1934 to 1944. He was also the first person to organize a public library in the city of
Ghulja
YiningThe official spelling according to (), also known as Ghulja ( ug, غۇلجا) or Qulja ( kk, قۇلجا) and formerly Ningyuan (), is a county-level city in Northwestern Xinjiang, People's Republic of China and the seat of the Ili Kazakh ...
(Kuljia). In the 1940s, he taught at the Tatar school in Ghulja.
Yüniç was one of the few leaders of a movement for Xinjiang's independence. He was also one of the composers of the Declaration of the People's Republic of East Turkistan, the first ethnic Uighur state, albeit one of the earliest satellite states of the
USSR
The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen nation ...
. Yüniç was also an education minister of the unrecognized state, while working as an editor of the "Free East Turkistan Gazette". He died during a
typhus
Typhus, also known as typhus fever, is a group of infectious diseases that include epidemic typhus, scrub typhus, and murine typhus. Common symptoms include fever, headache, and a rash. Typically these begin one to two weeks after exposure. ...
epidemic. The Soviet Union later dropped its support for the secessionist state, which collapsed and was reabsorbed into China.