Kazakh court case tests Chinese power
By James M. Dorsey
A Kazakh court is set to put to the test
China’s ability to impose its will and strongarm Muslim nations into
remaining silent about its brutal crackdown on Turkic Muslims in the
north-western province of Xinjiang.
The court will hear an appeal by a former worker in one of
Xinjiang’s multiple re-education camps against the rejection of her request for
asylum. The appeal illustrates the political quagmire faced by Central Asian
nations and Turkey given their ethnic, cultural and linguistic ties to China’s
estimated 11 million Turkic Muslims that include 1.5 million people of Kazakh
descent.
It also highlights China’s risky bet on being able to
leverage its economic power to ensure the Muslim world’s silence about what
amounts to the most concerted effort in recent history to reshape Muslim
religious practice.
Up
to one million Turkic Muslims have, according to the United Nations, been
detained in a network of re-education camps in which they are being
forced to accept the superiority of Chinese Communist Party beliefs and the
leadership of President Xi Jinping above the precepts of Islam.
Beyond the camps, Turkic Muslims in Xinjiang, a strategic
minerals-rich province bordering on eight Central and South Asian nations that
China has turned into a 21st century Orwellian surveillance state, are
forced
to refrain from religious practice and custom in public.
After denying the existing of the camps for the longest
period of time, China last month felt obliged to acknowledge them and give them
legal cover.
Authorities in Xinjiang amended their anti-extremism
regulations “to allow local governments
to set up institutions to provide people affected by extremist thoughts with
vocational skills training and psychological counselling.” China
asserts that the crackdown is intended to counter extremism, separatism and
terrorism.
China’s acknowledgement was designed to counter the UN
report,
threats of US sanctions against officials and companies involved in the
Xinjiang crackdown, and revelations by 41-year-old Sayragul
Sauytbay, a Chinese national of Kazakh descent.
Ms. Sauytbay testified
in an open Kazakh court that she had been employed in a Chinese
re-education camp for Kazakhs only that had 2,500 inmates. She said she was
aware of two more such camps reserved for Kazakhs.
Ms. Sauytbay was standing trial for entering Kazakhstan
illegally after having been detained at China’s request.
She told the court that she had escaped to Kazakhstan after
being advised by Chinese authorities that she would never be allowed to join
her family because of her knowledge of the camps. Ms. Sauytbay was given a
six-month suspended sentence and released from prison to join her recently
naturalized husband and children.
Since then, Ms. Sauytbay’s application for asylum has been
rejected and she has until the end of October to leave Kazakhstan. She hopes
that an appeal court will reverse the rejection.
Ms. Sauytbay’s case puts the Kazakh government between a
rock and a hard place and is but one of a string of recent cracks in the Muslim
wall of silence.
Kazakh authorities have to balance a desire to kowtow to
Chinese demands with a growing anti-Chinese sentiment that demands that the
government stand up for its nationals as well as Chinese nationals of Kazakh
descent.
Ms. Sauytbay’s revelations that ethnic Kazakhs were also
targeted in the Chinese crackdown sparked angry denunciations in Kazakhstan’s
parliament.
“There should be talks taking place with the Chinese
delegates. Every delegation that goes
there should be bringing this topic up… The key issue is that of the
human rights of ethnic Kazakhs in any country of the world being respected,”
said Kunaysh Sultanov, a member of parliament and former deputy prime minister
and ambassador to China.
In a further crack, Malaysia
this week released 11 Uyghurs who were detained after having escaped
detention in Thailand.
The Uyghurs were allowed to leave the country for Turkey.
The move, coming in the wake of a decision
by Germany and Sweden to suspend deportations of Uyghurs to China,
puts on the spot countries like Turkey
and the United
Arab Emirates, where Uyghurs risk extradition.
Malaysia’s release of the Uyghurs occurred days before Anwar
Ibrahim took the
first hurdle in becoming the country’s next prime minister by this
weekend winning a parliamentary by election.
Mr. Ibrahim last month became the
Muslim world’s most prominent politician to speak out about the
crackdown in Xinjiang.
Earlier, Rais Hussin, a supreme council member of Malaysian
prime minister Mahathir Mohamad’s Parti Pribumi Bersatu Malaysia (Bersatu)
party and head of its Policy and Strategy Bureau, cautioned that “that
geographical proximity cannot be taken advantage by
China to ride roughshod over everything that Malaysia holds dear,
such as Islam, democracy, freedom of worship and deep respect for every country's
sovereignty… On its mistreatment of Muslims in Xinjiang almost en masse,
Malaysia must speak up, and defend the most basic human rights of all.”
Pakistan’s Religious Affairs and Interfaith Harmony
minister, Noorul Haq Qadri, was forced to raise the issue of Turkic
Muslims with Chinese ambassador Yao Xing under pressure from
Pakistanis whose spouses and relatives had been detained in the Xinjiang
crackdown.
Ms. Sauytbay’s appeal for asylum is likely to refocus public
opinion in Kazakhstan and other Central Asian nations on the plight of their
Turkic brethren.
"She
will not be deported, we will not allow it," said Ms.
Sauytbay’s lawyer, Abzal Kuspanov.
Mr. Kuspanov’s defense of Ms. Sauytbay is about far more
than the fate of a former Chinese re-education camp employee. It will serve as
a barometer of China’s ability to impose its will. If China succeeds, it will
raise the question at what price. The answer to that is likely to only become
apparent over time.
Dr.
James M. Dorsey is a senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International
Studies, co-director of the University of Würzburg’s Institute for Fan Culture,
and co-host of the New Books in Middle Eastern Studies podcast.
James is the author of The Turbulent World
of Middle East Soccer blog, a book with the same title and a co-authored
volume, Comparative Political Transitions between Southeast Asia and
the Middle East and North Africa as well as Shifting
Sands, Essays on Sports and Politics in the Middle East and North Africa
and just published China
and the Middle East: Venturing into the Maelstrom
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