{"id":1306,"date":"2019-04-12T18:29:44","date_gmt":"2019-04-12T18:29:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/en.uyghuracademy.org\/?p=1306"},"modified":"2019-04-12T18:29:44","modified_gmt":"2019-04-12T18:29:44","slug":"the-mysterious-case-of-the-missing-kazakh-chinese-refugee","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/en.uyghuracademy.org\/?p=1306","title":{"rendered":"The Mysterious Case of the Missing Kazakh-Chinese Refugee"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The Diplomat<\/a><\/p>\n

A Chinese-born Kazakh was fighting deportation in Uzbekistan. Now no one is sure where he is.<\/span><\/p>\n

Central Asia is yet again embroiled in China\u2019s ongoing crackdown on Muslim minority groups in its farwestern region. In a series of videos posted online, Halemubieke Xiaheman, a Chinese-born Kazakh businessman, said he was fighting attempts by Beijing to return him to China from neighboring Uzbekistan. His current whereabouts are unknown.<\/p>\n

China has clamped down severely on its Muslim minority groups, especially Uyghurs, who are native to the Xinjiang region, but also Kazakhs, Kyrgyz, and others. Chinese authorities have detaining an estimated 1 million Uyghurs, Kazakhs, and others in re-education camps where they are forced to renounce their native culture and the Islamic religion and pledge loyalty to Communist Party leader Xi Jinping.<\/p>\n

China claims that its re-education camps are actually\u00a0\u201cvocational centers\u201d meant to\u00a0\u201cde-extremify\u201d Muslims and train them for gainful employment. China says such steps are necessary to counter terrorism and separatism in the region. Beijing has tightened its control over\u00a0the Uyghur homeland since a deadly riot in 2009 between Uyghurs and the majority Han Chinese population in Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang, and sporadic ensuing violence blamed on Islamic separatists in the years after.<\/p>\n

Enjoying this article?<\/b> Click here to subscribe for full access. Just $5 a month.<\/a><\/p>\n

In this particular incident, Xiaheman had filmed a video from inside the transit zone at the airport in Uzbekistan\u2019s capital, pleading for help, saying the Chinese Embassy there wanted him sent back to China. That video was distributed Thursday; over the next two days he released several more videos pleading his case.<\/p>\n

According to RFE\/RL<\/em>, Xiaheman\u2019s first video<\/a> contained a personal appeal to Uzbek President Shavkat Mirziyoyev as \u201ca brotherly Turkic-speaking Muslim man\u201d not to give in to Chinese pressure to deport him. \u201cIn\u00a0another video,\u201d RFE\/FL<\/em> added,\u00a0\u201cXiaheman\u2026 urged the U.S., German, Japanese, British, and Canadian authorities to prevent him from being extradited.\u201d<\/p>\n

He apparently succeeded in catching Washington\u2019s attention. A spokesman for the U.S. Embassy in Beijing said Monday that the embassy was aware of Xiaheman\u2019s situation and was in close touch with the United Nations High Commission for Refugees and \u201crelevant governments\u201d on his case.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe urge third countries to allow UNHCR and other UN organizations and nongovernmental organizations access to these asylum seekers to assess their protection claims and provide assistance,\u201d the spokesman said in an emailed response to a question from The Associated Press<\/em>.<\/p>\n

The Uzbek foreign ministry issued a statement saying he flew to Bangkok on Saturday.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe inform that he did not enter the territory of Uzbekistan and on February 9, 2019 flew out to Bangkok,\u201d it said.<\/p>\n

It wasn\u2019t immediately clear whether Xiaheman had arrived in Bangkok. The UNHCR office in Thailand said it was unable to comment due to confidentiality rules.<\/p>\n

Thailand has a mixed history on deporting Uyghurs back to China.\u00a0Bangkok has deported groups at times<\/a>,\u00a0but occasionally\u00a0refused to<\/a>\u00a0do so \u2014 particularly when faced with international pressure.<\/p>\n

The Uzbek foreign minister statement said Xiaheman had earlier flown from Thailand to Almaty, Kazakhstan after transiting in Tashkent, but gave no details. RFE\/RL <\/em>cited a Kazakh newspaper<\/a> as reporting that Xiaheman had been sent back to Tashkent\u2019s airport after being refused entry to Kazakhstan \u201cfor unknown reasons.\u201d<\/p>\n

This isn\u2019t the first time Kazakhstan has found itself pulled into China\u2019s crackdown on Muslim ethnic minority groups. As Catherine Putz reported for The Diplomat<\/em><\/a>, <\/em>Astana faced a difficult choice last year when an ethnic Kazakh Chinese citizen, Sayragul Sauytbay, sought asylum in Kazakhstan. Sauytbay, whose husband and children are Kazakh citizens, had fled from the re-education camps, were she was forced to be a teacher.<\/p>\n

As Putz noted:<\/p>\n

The case put Kazakhstan in a bind, caught between international political and economic concerns\u00a0\u2014 China is one of Kazakhstan\u2019s largest trading partners\u00a0\u2014 and domestic pressure. Existing anti-Chinese sentiments have been inflamed by news of \u201cre-education\u201d camps in Xinjiang imprisoning ethnic Kazakhs and the release of a handful of Kazakh citizens detained in China.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Kazakhstan tried to thread the needle by refusing to deport Sauytbay back to China (she had entered Kazakhstan illegally, hardly surprisingly given the nature of her arrival) but also rejecting her asylum claim<\/a>. If it\u2019s true that Xiaheman was refused entry to Kazakhstan, it\u2019s possible that the Kazakh government was trying to avoid another high-profile headache like the Sauytbay case.<\/p>\n

Though their governments would prefer not to get involved, civil society groups in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan have been organizing<\/a> to call attention to the plight of Muslims held in China. Even Kazakh and Kyrgyz citizens have sometimes been detained \u2013 or simply disappeared \u2013 when crossing the border to visit relatives in China. Governments in both Astana and Bishkek \u2013 more so in Kazakhstan \u2013 have put pressure on the groups to stop their work, but so far to no avail. In fact, it was a group of Kazakh activists\u00a0that first helped distribute Xiaheman\u2019s\u00a0videos pleading for help.<\/p>\n

Numerous Western nations have called previously on Beijing to close the camps and end persecution of its Muslim minority groups. To date, Central Asian governments have tried their best to avoid taking a strong stance. However, nationalism at home is a potent force and cannot be ignored entirely. As Putz pointed out, Kazakhstan has had to issue statements reassuring the public that it brings up the issue of ethnic Kazakhs in discussions with China. Beijing gave Astana a boost on that front by announcing in January that 2,000 ethnic Kazakhs in China would be \u2018allowed\u2019 to<\/a> leave the country.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, on Saturday Turkey broke its own longstanding silence on the Uyghur issue. Turkey\u2019s foreign ministry issued a statement<\/a> calling China\u2019s treatment of Uyghurs \u201ca great cause of shame for humanity,\u201d in a rare show of public criticism by a majority Muslim nation.<\/p>\n

source: https:\/\/thediplomat.com\/2019\/02\/the-mysterious-case-of-the-missing-kazakh-refugee\/<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Diplomat A Chinese-born Kazakh was fighting deportation in Uzbekistan. Now no one is sure where he is. Central Asia is yet again embroiled in China\u2019s ongoing crackdown on Muslim minority groups in its farwestern region. In a series of videos posted online, Halemubieke Xiaheman, a Chinese-born Kazakh businessman, said he was fighting attempts by […]<\/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-1306","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-chinas-uyghur-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/en.uyghuracademy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1306","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/en.uyghuracademy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/en.uyghuracademy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/en.uyghuracademy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/en.uyghuracademy.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1306"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/en.uyghuracademy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1306\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1307,"href":"https:\/\/en.uyghuracademy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1306\/revisions\/1307"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/en.uyghuracademy.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1306"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/en.uyghuracademy.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1306"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/en.uyghuracademy.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1306"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}