One of the most repressive aspects of China’s rule over Xinjiang is that the system of ensuring that Turkic and Muslim identities has spread beyond its borders. Kazakhstan, which shares a border with China and whose peoples, estimated to be over 1 million happen to be the second largest Turkic group living in Xinjiang. The tragedy is that this once thriving community, whose compatriots in Kazakhstan were the hub of activism regarding China’s genocide in Xinjiang have all gone silent now. Today, relatives of those Kazakhs resident in Xinjiang fear talking about the repression faced by their country cousins, for China has created fear. This has especially been the case after the crackdown by authorities in 2018 on the Uyghur and other ethnic Muslim minorities.
In this context, any effort by the local media in Kazakhstan to raise the issue of ethnic Kazakhs in Xinjiang is noteworthy. At the end of July this year, Zhas Alash, a Kazakh-language newspaper published an article on 22 members of an ethnic Kazakh family that were still behind bars in China. RFERL’s Kazakh Service notes that the author of the article said the relatives of those interned in Kazakhstan were hesitant to say anything, indicating the deep-rooted fear that pervades the ethnic Kazakhs. They know very well that advocacy could worsen the existing situation and naturally refused to comment.
The article written by Zhaqsylyq Qazymuratuly has drawn the attention of Kazakh authorities. Interestingly, most the people mentioned in t he Zhas Alash article appear to be have been associated with the Chinese government in one way or another. Note that Chinese officials have presented their post-2017 policies in Xinjiang as an extension of longer-term efforts to combat radicalism and separatism. Xinjiang-born journalist Qaliaqbar Usemkhanuly is quoted as saying in Qazymuratuly’s article that he knew most of those under arrest and had never seen any of them speak against Chinese authorities in Xinjiang. Some had been journalists for the State media in Xinjiang.
Amongst the 22 detainees is Qarapa Nasiolla, who was an educator and published works by poets, writers, and musicians, as well as reflections on Kazakh literature and history on his WeChat page. He has not been heard from since 2021 when he returned from a summer holiday in another Chinese province to Xinjiang. When he disappeared, Nasiolla’s Kazakhstan-based mother and brother released public appeals seeking information about him. Today, none of his relatives want to be interviewed by the media.
A couple of years prior to Nasiolla’s disappearance, the Kazakhs had come together by forming an advocacy group known as Atazhurt in Kazakhstan. The core of this organization constituted Kazakhs who had fled persecution by the Chinese state in 2017 and 2018. They issued appeals to the Kazakh government and to the international community, allowing an insight into the re-education camps that China had set up in Xinjiang. However, in due course, China began to pressurize Kazakh law enforcement agencies and insisted that they shut down the activities of Atazhurt.
Divide and rule tactics were adopted to splinter the Atazhurt and one of the co-founders claimed that the Kazakh government was being driven by China to shut their organization. He later moved to the US to live in exile. The Atazhurt (motherland/fatherland) human rights group, co-founded by Gulzhan Tokhtasyn and Serikzhan Bilash recorded about 10,000 video appeals relating to the crackdown in Xinjiang, drawing international attention to the crisis of the Uyghur and other ethnic peoples more than any other grassroots group.
In March 2019, Bilash was arrested and flown to Astana, where he was charged with extremist crimes in relation to a speech he had made. Discussions relating to the plight of the Xinjiang Kazakhs therefore remain sensitive, as the Kazakh State itself is prone to Chinese pressure. Today, most of the Kazakhs in Xinjiang who have been reunited with their relatives in Kazakhstan do not want to talk about their experiences. One red line that has thickened for Xinjiang Kazakhs and other Muslims after Chen Quanguo was installed in 2016 as Communist Party of China (CPC) Secretary in Xinjiang involves apolitical expressions of national identity.
The continued detention of ethnic Kazakhs indicates that the re-education camps are still in business. At least a few of them must be in operation. In 2018, UN experts had estimated that more than one million Uyghur and Muslim minorities had been detained in the indoctrination camps that China called vocational training centres! There were several types of detainees. Some were just there to be made into Han peoples. Others, who ‘graduated’, were compelled to work in factories for export purposes. Additionally, there are also detainees who are serving hard jail time, most of them on false political and terrorism-related charges.
Over the years, ethnic Kazakhs have continued to trickle out of Xinjiang. Once in while the Kazakh government shows its concern to the Chinese government over the problems faced by Kazakh citizens in Xinjiang, without of course directly criticising China. This is because of Kazakhstan’s economic dependence on China. Pertinently, President Qasym-Zhomart Toqaev paid his first official visit to the region in 2023, where he held talks with local authorities, but not with the Kazakh community separately. In March 2024, he held talks in Astana with Erkin Tuniyaz, the second-most powerful CPC official in Xinjiang who, like former boss Chen, is under US sanctions in connection with the Xinjiang incarcerations. When President Toqaev visited Xian in 2023, he signed a deal with President Xi Jinping on migration. The agreement is tied to tightening bilateral cooperation on migration, leading to ever closer exchanges of information regarding Kazakhs with birth ties to China and making it harder for Chinese Kazakhs to achieve Kazakh citizenship.  Kazakh authorities had previously informed people worried about ethnic Kazakhs in Xinjiang that Astana’s representatives in the region have elaborated a “family reunification mechanism” in cooperation with Chinese officials. Sounds very Chinese! That being said attention must once again be drawn, to the plight of ethnic Kazakhs under detention in Xinjiang and a hurray for those in Kazakhstan for their efforts to shed light on the plight of those interned.
Source: https://www.joshuaproject.net/people_groups/12599/CH