{"id":633,"date":"2017-12-06T14:51:26","date_gmt":"2017-12-06T14:51:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/akademiye.org\/en\/?p=633"},"modified":"2017-12-06T14:51:26","modified_gmt":"2017-12-06T14:51:26","slug":"in-xinjiang-ethnic-kazakhs-and-kyrgyz-face-increased-pressure","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/akademiye.org\/en\/?p=633","title":{"rendered":"In Xinjiang, Ethnic Kazakhs and Kyrgyz Face Increased Pressure"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Chinese authorities have put increasing pressure on ethnic Kazakhs and Kyrgyz in Xinjiang.<\/p>\n

By Catherine Putz<\/p>\n

In recent months, ethnic Kazakhs and Kyrgyz in China\u2019s westernmost province \u2014 Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region \u2014 have been subject to pressure and detention by Chinese authorities.<\/p>\n

On Friday,\u00a0Radio Free Asia<\/a><\/em>\u00a0reported that Chinese authorities in Xinjiang had detained an ethnic Kazakh family\u00a0that was returning from a visit to relatives in Kazakhstan.<\/p>\n

Nurhoja Teksi was detained alongside his wife and two elderly relatives last month after crossing the border into China following a lengthy stay in Almaty, a Kazakhstan-based source said.<\/i><\/p>\n

Enjoying this article?<\/b>\u00a0Click here to subscribe for full access. Just $5 a month.<\/a>The couple were in the process of taking the elderly relatives back to visit their hometown in Xinjiang\u2019s Ili Kazakh Autonomous Prefecture, she said.<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

A handful of Kazakhstan-based sources told RFA of routine detentions of \u201cethnic minority Kazakhs who attend mosque or who pray regularly.\u201d One said his family in China refused to let him visit, fearful of increased police scrutiny. RFA has carried several such reports in recent weeks with troubling details:\u00a0quotas for the detention of Uyghurs and ethnic Kazakhs<\/a>\u00a0(3,000 per week, according to RFA\u2019s source);\u00a0detention of ethnic Kazakh business owners<\/a>;\u00a0police-run re-education centers<\/a>; teachers reporting students for\u00a0\u201cwearing \u2018Islamic\u2019 clothing and praying\u201d<\/a>;\u00a0raids on ethnic Kazakh homes<\/a>\u00a0including confiscation of Qurans and prayer mats; and\u00a0blacklisting of ethnic Kazakhs who visited relatives in Kazakhstan<\/a>. In\u00a0September<\/a>, an ethnic Kazakh man reportedly died in custody of Chinese police after going to the police station to inquire about the whereabouts of his two \u201cdisappeared\u201d brothers.<\/p>\n

Human Rights Watch<\/a>, monitoring the larger crackdown on Uyghurs \u2014 which China has pursued near and far \u2014 noted media reports which said \u201cethnic\u00a0Kazakhs<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Kyrgyz<\/a>\u00a0have also been detained for having traveled abroad or having \u2018spoken about Kazakhstan a lot.\u2019 Other reasons for their detentions are not known.\u201d<\/p>\n

Beijing\u2019s long-running campaign against Uyghurs serves as the model for the targeting of ethnic Kazakhs and Kyrgyz. Bruce Pannier noted these trends in August, writing about the trouble faced by both the ethnic\u00a0Kazakhs<\/a>and\u00a0Kyrgyz<\/a>\u00a0in China: \u201cThe Kyrgyz and Kazakhs are increasingly seen by the Chinese authorities as \u2014 at the least \u2014 potential confederates of the Uyghurs.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the Borderland<\/b><\/p>\n

Ethnic Kyrgyz and Kazakhs are largely grouped in two prefectures in Xinjiang \u2014 Kizilsu Kirghiz Autonomous Prefecture and Ili Kazakh Autonomous Prefecture. Each abuts Central Asia in a borderland that has long worried Beijing as a possible fertile ground for the three evils, \u201cterrorism, separatism, and religious extremism.\u201d<\/p>\n

The territory was once disputed by China and the USSR. The 1996 Treaty on Deepening Military Trust in Border Regions, signed in Shanghai between China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, and Tajikistan formed the basis not only of the Shanghai Five (eventually the Shanghai Cooperation Organization) but also sparked a renegotiation of the borders between Central Asia and China.<\/p>\n

The Chinese, by the mid-1990s, had reduced their territorial claims in Central Asia to about\u00a034,000 square kilometers<\/a>. (Mao, citing \u201cunequal treaties\u201d with czarist Russia and the USSR, had earlier laid claim to more than 900,000 square kilometers in Central Asia.) In 1999, Kazakhstan ceded about half of what Beijing claimed. As Pannier has written, \u201cState media repeatedly focused on the fact Kazakhstan had received \u201856.9 percent\u2019 of the disputed territory but critics pointed out that the remaining 43.1 percent had been Kazakhstan\u2019s land until the new deal with China.\u201d<\/p>\n

A notable feature across the several RFA and RFE\/RL reports about the crackdown on ethnic Kazakhs and Kyrgyz in China is the targeting of individuals with cross-border connections. Given the fact that the border was adjusted less than 20 years ago, it\u2019s no surprise that there are large numbers of ethnic Kazakhs on the Chinese side of the border with relatives who made the decision to move to Kazakhstan.<\/p>\n

As Pannier wrote in August, after achieving independence, both Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan sounded the call for their expatriates to return home. This was a decidedly bigger deal for Kazakhstan where, at the time of independence, ethnic Kazakhs were a minority. As Pannier notes, about 1 million Kazakhs from across the region and further abroad \u2014 Turkey, Russia, Mongolia, and China \u2014 were repatriated. They are known as \u201coralman.\u201d The Kyrgyz equivalent, \u201ckairylman,\u201d are fewer in number but face similar issues.<\/p>\n

For example, an\u00a0RFA report<\/a>\u00a0from early November cites a source in Xinjiang\u2019s capital, Urumqi, as recounting a story about an elderly Kazakh woman who was \u201cforced to sign a document declaring \u2018an end to the maternal relationship with my son\u2019 and to cancel her grown son\u2019s household registration document linked to his family home, to enable him to get a visa to come home and visit her after he obtained Kazakhstan citizenship.\u201d<\/p>\n

RFA said, \u201cNew rules introduced since August have made it almost impossible for naturalized citizens of Kazakhstan who were once holders of Chinese passports to get a visa to come and visit relatives.<\/p>\n

Muted Official Reaction in Kazakhstan<\/b><\/p>\n

Astana has avoided commenting on the widespread detention of ethnic Kazakhs in China and elsewhere*. Indeed, when Egyptian secret police began rounding up more than 200 Chinese passport holding religious students at Cairo\u2019s Al-Azhar Islamic University this summer,\u00a0seven ethnic Kazakhs<\/a>\u00a0fled to Turkey after their asylum applications were rejected by Kazakhstan. Two more have been held incommunicado after being repatriated to China.<\/p>\n

Kazakhstan \u2014 and all of Central Asia \u2014 has been\u00a0relatively pliant in facilitating<\/a>\u00a0China\u2019s pursuit of Uyghurs abroad. Beijing claims that it faces a violent, extremist, separatist movement in Xinjiang; meanwhile critics of the government\u2019s rights-repressing tactics say that Beijing is only fueling the fire motivating Uyghur separatists. While Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan both have\u00a0large Uyghur minorities<\/a>, Astana and Bishkek have in the\u00a0past extradited individuals sought by Beijing<\/a>. The Uyghur issue came to a head in Kyrgyzstan\u00a0last year<\/a>\u00a0when a man drove a car laden with explosives into the Chinese Embassy in Bishkek. Kyrgyz and Chinese authorities ultimately pegged responsibility on Uyghur separatists.<\/p>\n

Beijing and the Central Asian capitals share economic interests in maintaining a stable relationships \u2014 summarized largely in recent times by the Belt and Road Initiative.<\/p>\n

In Kazakhstan, there is additional motivation to downplay the plight of ethnic Kazakhs in China. Anti-Chinese sentiment is already extant and showed itself most prominently last year when rumors about pending land code changes touched off significant protests across the country. The rumors held that the\u00a0land code changes<\/a>\u00a0would allow Chinese to buy up large swaths of Kazakh steppe (the rumors were false, but the land code changes\u00a0were scrapped for the time being<\/a>\u00a0anyway).<\/p>\n

But Kazakhstan has a much more open media space, relative to China, especially Xinjiang. There have been discussions of Beijing\u2019s treatment of ethnic Kazakhs on social media but they have not been too loud (Kazakhstan has sent citizens to jail for\u00a0social media posts<\/a>, after all). In Xinjiang, sites like Facebook and Twitter are routinely blocked and the Chinese government has\u00a0moved toward blocking VPNs<\/a>\u00a0(through which Chinese citizens circumvent blocks). By detaining those who move between Kazakhstan and China, Beijing is further isolating the region.<\/p>\n

*Update<\/em>:\u00a0After initial publication, the Kazakh Foreign Ministry\u00a0said in a statement\u00a0<\/a>that the ministry has held talks with the Chinese regarding the treatment of ethnic Kazakhs in Xinjiang. The issue is reportedly on the agenda for Kazakh Deputy Foreign Minister Aqylbek Kamaldinov\u2019s visit to Beijing in December.<\/em><\/p>\n

https:\/\/thediplomat.com\/2017\/11\/in-xinjiang-ethnic-kazakhs-and-kyrgyz-face-increased-pressure\/<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Chinese authorities have put increasing pressure on ethnic Kazakhs and Kyrgyz in Xinjiang. By Catherine Putz In recent months, ethnic Kazakhs and Kyrgyz in China\u2019s westernmost province \u2014 Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region \u2014 have been subject to pressure and detention by Chinese authorities. On Friday,\u00a0Radio Free Asia\u00a0reported that Chinese authorities in Xinjiang had detained an […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-633","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-chinas-uyghur-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/akademiye.org\/en\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/633","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/akademiye.org\/en\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/akademiye.org\/en\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/akademiye.org\/en\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/akademiye.org\/en\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=633"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/akademiye.org\/en\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/633\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":635,"href":"https:\/\/akademiye.org\/en\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/633\/revisions\/635"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/akademiye.org\/en\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=633"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/akademiye.org\/en\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=633"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/akademiye.org\/en\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=633"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}