On 6 January 2020, Zaysan District Court in East Kazakhstan began hearing a case against two ethnic Kazakhs accused of illegally crossing the state border from the People’s Republic of China (PRC) into Kazakhstan. The defendants say they escaped a “political re-education camp” in Xinjiang[1], where they were imprisoned and tortured because of their Islamic faith. While international human rights organisations, like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, and local activists have urged the Kazakh government based in Nur-Sultan to drop the charges against the defendants, as required under international law, the threat of economic sanctions from Beijing has so far prevented Nur-Sultan from addressing the human rights disaster unfolding on its doorstep.
INTERNATIONAL ASYLUM LAW PROHIBITS REFOULEMENT
Refugees, especially political refugees, are often forced to cross borders illegally. Consequently, Article 31 of the United Nations (UN) Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees (“Refugee Convention”) prohibits states from penalising refugees because of their “illegal entry or presence” provided that (a) their “life or freedom was threatened” in their place of origin and (b) “they present themselves without delay to the authorities and show good cause for their illegal entry or presence.” Article 33 of the Refugee Convention prohibits the refoulement—the forcible return—of such refugees.
Likewise, Article 3 of the UN Convention against Torture and other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (CAT) prohibits the refoulement of refugees to a place where they may be tortured.
THE PRESENT CASE
The first defendant, Quster Musakhanuly, testified in court that he had spent five years in a political re-education camp from 2013 to 2017, where he and other inmates were subjected to beatings and political indoctrination designed to inculcate Chinese patriotism and discourage adherence to Islam.
After his release, he was forced to teach other inmates in the camp system:
“Everyone is punished regardless of age… After liberation, I taught in the “camps”. I was forced to agitate people, to say that China just wants us to learn the Chinese language, that China’s policy is good. If we do everything right, they don’t beat us.”
In September 2019, he was twice summoned by local police for interrogation and detained for 24 hours alongside the second defendant, Murager Alimuly, who had also spent time in the camp system. The pair were notified that they would have to return to the camp system, but were not told the reason why.
Deciding they would rather flee the country than return to the camp system, the defendants fled to Kazakhstan, which has become a hub for Turkic Muslims fleeing persecution in China.
The defendants entered Kazakhstan on 6 October 2019. On 14 October 2019, they presented themselves to the Kazakhstan Bureau of Human Rights. The same day they were delivered to Border Service and detained “for investigative actions”. Although the defendants applied for asylum at the time, their applications were placed on hold pending the outcome of criminal proceedings.
Following the first hearing, which was held on 6 January 2020, they remain in detention awaiting the outcome of their prosecution.
GROWING EVIDENCE OF LARGE SCALE PERSECUTION OF MUSLIMS IN CHINA
The defendants’ testimonies join growing evidence that the PRC government is engaged in large-scale and systematic persecution of the 15 million, or so, Turkic Muslims living in Xinjiang,[2] which includes around 1.5 million ethnic Kazakh Muslims.
Despite contrary domestic pressure, Nur-Sultan has historically failed to confront Beijing on this issue, acquiescing to Beijing’s requests for repatriation of Turkic Muslim refugees, arresting Muslim-rights advocates and even pressuring asylum applicants into dropping their applications.
More recently, Nur-Sultan has tried tentatively to raise concerns regarding some of its citizens, who appear to have disappeared while visiting family in Xinjiang, but to little avail. This is not surprising. The PRC is an important trading partners and source of foreign investment. for Kazakhstan. The latter has even referred to itself as “the buckle” in the PRC’s grandiose trillion-dollar One Road, One Belt infrastructure-building programme. Kazakhstan’s ruling strongman, Nazarbayev, can ill afford the social unrest that comes with a trade war, particularly as he attempts to fulfil his vision of the country as the “Singapore of the Steppes”—a competitive free market economy and a carefully supervised society. And the PRC is keenly aware of this.
This is bad news for those refugees fleeing Xinjiang, who were hoping to escape persecution by crossing the border: the PRC’s grip extends far into Central Asia. And it is bad news for pro-human rights activists within Kazakhstan, who were hoping to bring about quiet reform of the country’s authoritarian political system.
Nur-Sultan’s continued silence will fuel anti-China sentiment in the country and force the government to chose between the PRC and its own people; and, if it choses badly, there is no predicting how it will play out
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Legal citations
[1] Note for Editor: Xinjiang means “New Colony” in Mandarin Chinese. The native Turkic populations refer to the country as East Turkmenistan
[2] China Tribunal Final Judgment 17 June 2019
Samuel is a trainee solicitor and postgraduate at Cardiff University. He is active in several U.K.-based organisations campaigning on behalf of Hong Kong and BNOs. His research interests include transitional justice and the rule of law.