Xabib Yunich

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Yüniç Xäbib Fazılcan ulı (pronounced [jyˈnitʃ xæˈbib fɑzɯɫˈdʒɑn uɫɯ] in Uyghur; 1905-1945) was a politician, pedagogue, and journalist in East Turkistan, an area now known as the Xinjiang province of western China. He was an ethnic Tatar, and a Muslim.

After returning to East Turkistan from Turkey, where he studied, he organized the first Uyghur language 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 (Kuljia). In the 1940s, he taught at the Tatar school in Ghulja.

Yüniç was one of the few leaders of a movement for national 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. East Turkistan had previously been supported by the Soviet Union, but was later suppressed both by China and the Soviet Union. At present, it comprises the northwest of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region.

Yüniç was also an education minister of the short-lived independent East Turkistan state (1944-1945), and at the same time served as an editor of the publication Azat Sherqiy Türkistan, which literally means "Free East Turkistan Gazette". He died during a typhus epidemic.