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Kazakh rights defender arrested over Xinjiang activism
ALMATY, Kazakhstan, March 10, 2019 (BSS/AFP) – Kazakh police on Sunday
arrested an activist who has campaigned for victims of China’s re-education
drive in Xinjiang, sealing his informal group’s office and taking its
computers, his civil partner said.
Serikjan Bilash, who has led a loud awareness drive centred on ethnic
Kazakh victims of China’s crackdown in the region, was arrested in
Kazakhstan’s largest city Almaty and flown to the capital Astana, his partner
told AFP.
Bilash appeared on Sunday in a video filmed by Kazakh police confirming he
was facing charges of inciting hatred, although it was not immediately clear
what motivated the charges.
“They took my husband in the early hours of Sunday and transferred him by
plane to Astana. It seems to be very serious,” Bilash’s partner Leila Adiljan
said.
In the video statement, Bilash confirmed he was in police custody in Astana
and had not been taken “by either the Chinese or Chinese spies”. An AFP
correspondent saw a group of Kazakh law enforcement officers leave the office
used by Bilash’s Ata-Jurt rights group with black plastic bags on Sunday.
The policemen refused to comment but office volunteers said the bags
contained computers, cameras and hard drives with information about people
detained in Xinjiang.
The office was later sealed.
Bilash has hosted regular press conferences at the location, highlighting
the plight of Kazakhs and other majority-Muslim groups in Xinjiang, where
China is pursuing its “re-education” campaign as part of what it calls an
anti-separatist drive.
Oil-rich Kazakhstan’s government is a Beijing ally that positions itself as
“the buckle” in China’s trillion-dollar Belt and Road trade and investment
agenda, a strategy for infrastructure and development projects throughout
Asia, Europe and Africa.
Kazakhstan’s foreign ministry has entered into dialogue with Beijing over
Kazakhs in Xinjiang, but only mentioned the re-education camps publicly for
the first time earlier this month.
More than a million people from Muslim minorities — mostly ethnic Uighurs,
but also Kazakhs, Kyrgyz and Hui — are being held in internment centres
across Xinjiang, according to a United Nations panel of experts.
BSS/AFP/RY/1658 hrs