ASTANA -- At the peak of China's repression of Turkic and Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang region some six years ago, Kazakhstan was a kind of hub for activism and reporting on what international rights experts said were "crimes against humanity."
Then came the fear.
With a population likely numbering more than 1 million people -- official statistics are lacking -- ethnic Kazakhs are the second-largest Turkic group living in Xinjiang.
Unlike the more populous Uyghurs, they live next door to a country where they are a titular people and where many of them traveled regularly before China's crackdown began.
When arrests started really flowing in late 2017 and 2018, hundreds of Xinjiang-born Kazakhs who had moved to Kazakhstan before the crisis organized to issue appeals for missing relatives, both to the Kazakh government and the international community at large.
Yet the group that drove that effort, Atazhurt, soon came under pressure from local security services.
Atazhurt splintered into factions, and its co-founder -- who claimed the Kazakh authorities were being directed by their Beijing allies -- now lives in de-facto exile in the United States.
Relatives of ethnic Kazakhs who have been forcibly detained in internment camps in China hold a public meeting in Almaty in 2018 to ask for help from the UN and the Kazakh government to help secure their release.
Discussions related to the plight of the Xinjiang Kazakhs are therefore sensitive, while most of the Kazakhs in Xinjiang who have been reunited with relatives in Kazakhstan in the past couple of years -- sometimes after years of separation -- are in no hurry to talk about their experiences.
That makes any effort to restart the conversation in Kazakhstan's local press noteworthy.
One such effort occurred at the end of July when the Kazakh-language newspaper Zhas Alash published an article on what it said were 22 members of the ethnic Kazakh intelligentsia currently languishing behind bars in China.
But as the article's author said in an interview with RFE/RL's Kazakh Service, the Kazakh-based relatives of these detainees are increasingly reluctant to say anything about their cases.
SEE ALSO: China In Eurasia Briefing: The Power of Siberia-2 Pipeline Hits A Snag In Mongolia"All of them refused to comment. The reason is obvious. Advocacy could worsen the situation for their relatives in detention," said Zhaqsylyq Qazymuratuly.
'I Never Saw Any Of Them Speak Out Against Chinese Authorities'
So who are these 22 authors?
While Chinese officials have presented their post-2016 policies in Xinjiang as an extension of longer-term efforts to combat radicalism and separatism, many of the people mentioned as detained in the Zhas Alash article were directly connected to the Chinese state.
"Some of the arrested individuals I know personally. We were friends, we communicated well. I have been friends with some of them for 15 years, but I never saw any of them speak out against the Chinese authorities," Xinjiang-born journalist Qaliaqbar Usemkhanuly was quoted as saying in Qazymuratuly's article.
Usemkhanuly would know. Before moving to Kazakhstan, he worked -- like many of the detainees mentioned in the article -- in the state-controlled media in Xinjiang.
As Qazymuratuly argues, this is not a profession that allows room for experimentation.
"How did things work under Soviet rule?... Information in China undergoes a similar procedure before publication," Qazymuratuly told RFE/RL's Kazakh Service.
Kanat Yerezhep, an ethnic Kazakh who is the former deputy head of Xinjiang TV, is believed to be imprisoned in China on unknown charges.
"Every message, every news item was filtered before publication," the journalist said. "Now, after several years, they find some shortcomings. But this seems to be just an excuse for arresting and imprisoning these people."
A red line that has thickened considerably for Xinjiang Kazakhs and other Muslims in the region after the now-retired, hard-line Chinese Communist Party boss Chen Quanguo was installed in 2016 involves apolitical expressions of national identity.
One of the 22 detainees, Qarapa Nasiolla, was an educator who published works by poets, writers, and musicians, as well as reflections on Kazakh literature and history on his WeChat page that was popular with local Kazakhs.
He moved from Xinjiang to another province with a teaching job and has not been heard from since 2021, when he returned to the region from a summer holiday.
Back then, Nasiolla's Kazakhstan-based mother and brother both released public appeals seeking information about him.
But when RFE/RL's Kazakh Service reached out to Nasiolla's relatives this month, none of them agreed to an interview.
The Zhas Alash website article about the alleged detention of ethnic Kazakhs in Xinjiang
Toqaev In Xinjiang
In 2018, United Nations experts estimated that more than 1 million Uyghur and Muslim minorities had been detained in Xinjiang indoctrination camps that Chinese officials likened to vocational training centers.
These facilities, reputed for their humiliation and brutality toward detainees, are now believed to be largely closed. Other former detainees, some graduates of the camps, reported being compelled to work in factories whose goods were exported.
A third group, which has ironically received the least international media attention, consists of detainees who are serving hard jail time, inevitably on trumped-up political and terrorism-related charges.
It would be untrue to say Kazakhstan's government has done nothing for the Xinjiang Kazakhs. Authorities have more than once expressed concern to their Chinese counterparts over problems in the region impacting Kazakh citizens, although always in terms that avoided criticizing China.
Since then, ethnic Kazakhs have continued to leave Xinjiang for Kazakhstan, often arriving in batches, suggesting some level of negotiations by Astana over their resettlement.
But given Astana's economic dependence on Beijing, it is hard to escape the idea that the repression of ethnic Kazakhs are fairly low on the bilateral agenda.
Indeed, when it comes to tone-setting, President Qasym-Zhomart Toqaev has offered a visible legitimacy boost to the authorities that have overseen the crackdown.
Qasym-Zhomart Toqaev (left) and Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing in October 2023
Toqaev in 2023 paid his first official visit to the region, where the Kazakh Foreign Ministry said he held talks with local decision-makers but not with the Kazakh community separately.
In March he held talks in Astana with Erkin Tuniyaz, the second-most powerful Chinese Communist Party official in Xinjiang who, like former boss Chen, is under sanctions from the U.S. government in connection with the Xinjiang incarcerations.
Months before, Turniyaz had been expected for talks in London and Brussels, where he is not under sanctions, but those visits were canceled amid a public outcry.
The Kazakh Service reached out to the Kazakh Foreign Ministry with an official inquiry, requesting comment on the allegedly arbitrary arrest and detention of 22 people in Xinjiang.
Press Secretary Aibek Smadiyarov promised to obtain information from specialists, but no response was received by the time of publication.
Kazakh authorities have previously informed people worried about ethnic Kazakhs in Xinjiang that Astana's representatives in the region have elaborated a "family reunification mechanism" in cooperation with Chinese officials.
People were told to apply to the government for help to reunite their family via the eOtinish platform.
As for getting information from China itself, the Kazakh relatives of detainees who picketed the Chinese Consulate in Almaty for more than two years would probably agree that Chinese officials prefer not to engage.
When a correspondent for RFE/RL's Kazakh Service contacted Ambassador Zhang Xiao at a recent meeting at Kazakhstan's National Center of Biotechnology, he expressed irritation that the question was about the 22 Kazakhs in Zhas Alash's article rather about his visit to the center.
"There is nothing of the sort!" Zhang exclaimed before ignoring follow-up questions.