More than 50,000 Kyrgyz in Chinese Re-Education Camps in Xinjiang are Ethnic Kyrgyz

Paul Goble

            Staunton, November 21 – There has been an international outcry against China’s incarceration in what it calls political re-education camps of more than a million Muslims in its Xinjiang-Uyghur Autonomous District. Most are ethnic Uyghurs, but a new report that more than 50,000 are ethnic Kyrgyz is likely to spark a new wave of anger in Kyrgyzstan. 

            That is because the Kyrgyz have a state of their own, something the Uyghurs don’t, and follow with care the fate of their co-ethnics abroad, especially in China. Moreover, this report is likely to rile other Central Asian countries, particularly Kazakhstan, which also have large co-ethnic populations in China.

            Reports about Kyrgyz detainees was first reported by RFE/RL and Radio Free Asia (rus.azattyk.org/a/никого-в-селе-не-осталось-в-китае-массово-задерживают-кыргызов-/29611253.html and rfa.org/uyghur/xewerler/qanun/uyghurda-lager-11122018173706.html). They now have been picked up in Central Asia (fergananews.com/news/34215).

                Ethnic Kyrgyz who had returned to Kyrgyzstan from China, known in their own country as Kayrylmany, say they have lost touch with relatives still in Xinjiang and assume that all of them have been arrested and sent to the re-education centers which the Kyrgyz say are “ordinary prisons” in which inmates are tortured.

                China has long persecuted the Muslim population of Xinjiang including ethnic Kyrgyz and ethnic Kazakhs alongside the predominant Uyghurs (fergananews.com/news/27174), but the situation has clearly gotten worse as this report and an earlier one that ethnic Kazakhs from China were refusing to go back there after stays in Kazakhstan (fergananews.com/news/30935).