From his exile in Sweden the Uyghur composer, musician and poet Kurash Sultan was like an ambassador to the Uyghurs - the indigenous people in East Turkistan in north-western China. He died 47 years old from a heart stroke on 29 October 2006.

Kurash Sultan was invited to speak at the 3rd Freemuse World Conference in Istanbul on 25 November 2006. He was a famous Uyghur artist who sang and wrote countless songs and poems on the freedom of his homeland, East Turkistan, where the Uyghurs are struggling to keep their language and their culture. For that same reason he has been imprisoned and tortured by the authorities, many of his songs were banned in East Turkistan, and he had to escape the country. He was buried in Sweden on 1 November 2006.

Kurash Sultan (also known as Kuresh Kusen, Kurash Kusan or Koresh Kosen) was born in 1959 in the capital city Urumchi of Xinjiang - a region which Uyghurs often refer to as East Turkistan. "Xinjiang" means "New Frontier" and is the Han Chinese name for the autonomous region. In the 1980's Kurash Sultan worked as a music teacher, and studied music conducting. In 1992-1995 he worked an editor of Xinjiang Art, a magazine published by the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region's Writers Union.

http://www.uyghurpen.org/kuresh-kusen.html