About Közet

Közet is an independent nonprofit newsroom covering Uyghurs worldwide, in English, Uyghur, and Chinese. Founded in 2026 and based in Washington, Közet reports on Uyghur life, rights, and the policies that shape them.

Each language edition is edited for its own audience rather than translated from a single source, so a story reaches readers in the language where it matters most to them.

Independent newsrooms covering Uyghurs are few, and the regions where Uyghurs are concentrated remain largely closed to reporters. Közet was founded to help close that gap, reporting on Uyghurs for Uyghurs themselves, and for the engaged global public, policymakers, scholars, and journalists who follow them.

Közet is published by Uyghur Monitor Inc., a tax-exempt nonprofit organization recognized by the U.S. Internal Revenue Service under section 501(c)(3). We accept no commercial advertising, and our funders have no influence over what we report or how. Our work is guided by journalistic principles alone.

Közet began operations in 2026 with initial grant funding from the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and early support from several other institutions. Funders play no role in Közet’s editorial decisions.

Founder and Executive Director

Kasim Kashgar
Kasim Kashgar was previously a journalist at Voice of America, where he reported on Uyghur affairs and the wider region. He is a 2026–2027 Cullman Center Fellow at the New York Public Library.

Board of Directors

Donald Clarke — Chairman
Donald Clarke is Professor of Law Emeritus at George Washington University Law School, where his work centers on modern Chinese law, including corporate governance, legal institutions, and the legal dimensions of China’s economic reforms. He founded and maintains Chinalaw, a long-running listserv on Chinese law, and writes The China Collection blog and the Chinese Law Notes newsletter. He has served as an expert witness on Chinese law and has advised the Asian Development Bank, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board, and the U.S. Department of Justice. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. He holds an A.B. from Princeton, an M.Sc. from the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) at the University of London, and a J.D. from Harvard Law School, where he was an editor of the Harvard Law Review.

Gene Bunin — Treasurer
Gene A. Bunin is the founder and curator of the Xinjiang Victims Database (shahit.biz), which documents people detained in the mass incarcerations in the region. Before starting the project in 2018, he lived in Xinjiang for years and conducted independent research on the Uyghur language. He works with data verification, factchecking, and triangulation, and his background is in mathematics and engineering. He has written on Xinjiang for The Guardian, Foreign Policy, and Agence France-Presse.

Bethany Allen — Secretary
Bethany Allen is an investigative journalist and foreign correspondent, and the author of Beijing Rules: How China Weaponized Its Economy to Confront the World, named a Best Book of 2023 by the Financial Times. She leads the China investigations and analysis team at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute. She was previously China reporter at Axios, covering how Beijing projects power beyond its borders, and lead reporter for the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists’ China Cables project, which exposed classified documents on the mass internment camps in Xinjiang. For that work she received the Society of Professional Journalists’ Robert D. G. Lewis Watchdog Award and its investigative journalism prize in the online category. She earlier worked as an editor and writer at Foreign Policy. She is based in Taipei.

Közet is published by Uyghur Monitor Inc., a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt nonprofit incorporated in Delaware. EIN 37-2218531. Contributions are tax-deductible to the extent permitted by law.