Ethnic Kazakh In Xinjiang Sends 'Extremely Rare' SOS In Bid To Escape Arrest, China

In the uber-authoritarian police state that is China's Xinjiang Province, it is hard enough to speak out, let alone try to reach an international audience in a bid to flee to a neighboring country.

Yet Zhanargul Zhumatai, an ethnic Kazakh journalist and musician residing in the city of Urumqi, is doing just that.

In the past week, Zhumatai, 47, has been sounding the alarm about the pressure she is under from local security services.

She said they have told her she faces arrest for communicating with a well-known Kazakh activist who lives in the United States but can "save herself" if she signs into a psychiatric hospital.

Now she is hoping that the international community will support her in her bid to travel to Kazakhstan, where she has residency rights and once worked for government-funded media.

"If I disappear or if I die, I want the world to hold them responsible," Zhumatai told Danish academic and Xinjiang expert Rune Steenberg in an international phone call on January 2.

Witnessing 'Everything But Death' In The Camp

China's northwestern province of Xinjiang is one of the most tightly controlled jurisdictions in the world.

In recent years it has become synonymous with the incarceration of over 1 million Turkic and Muslim minorities -- some independent estimates have doubled that figure -- initially in tightly guarded facilities that Beijing likened to vocational training centers.

A facility believed to be a re-education camp where mostly Muslim ethnic minorities are detained in Artux, north of Kashgar in China's Xinjiang region, in 2019.

Outside of China the facilities were branded "reeducation camps" and the testimonies of former detainees, including a number of ethnic Kazakhs, revealed shocking patterns of abuse there.

Zhumatai's claim to have spent time in one of these facilities is backed up by leaked Chinese police records that say she was arrested in 2017.

Steenberg, who works at the Palacky University of Olomouc in the Czech Republic, told RFE/RL he has spoken to Zhumatai every day since January 2.

The anthropologist said it is "extremely rare" for anyone in Xinjiang -- a province where even having foreign apps on a telephone can invite incarceration -- to discuss state pressure with foreigners.

Zhumatai, who in the past worked in Kazakhstan as an editor for the government-funded Qazaqstan Radio and Television Corporation, knows the risks connected with foreign communication all too well.

The leaked police records cited in her profile on the Xinjiang Victims Database state as pretexts for her arrest in 2017 the discovery of "non-mainstream" software on her phone as well as her travel to "focus countries" -- a presumed reference to Kazakhstan.

In their discussion, Zhumatai told Steenberg that local Urumqi authorities had told her she faced imminent arrest for communicating with Serikzhan Bilash, a well-known Xinjiang-born Kazakh activist who lives in the United States.

"If you want to save yourself, from today, from this evening you should go and commit yourself to a psychiatric ward," Zhumatai quoted the authorities as telling her.

She added that she still suffers heart palpitations as a result of her stint of two years inside the camp, where she said she witnessed "all but death."

A transcript of their first conversation was published on the Xinjiang Victims Database, the largest database in the world tracking victims of the Chinese state.

Police officers stand at the outer entrance of the Urumqi No. 3 Detention Center in Dabancheng in western China's Xinjiang Province in 2021.

Steenberg has confirmed the authenticity of the transcript and told RFE/RL that Zhumatai on January 5 informed him she has been in contact with Kazakhstan's embassy in Beijing.

"They told her that she would be given papers to enter Kazakhstan.... She is happy about this but still doesn't trust them fully. She fears that (China's Public Security Bureau) or the local city administration may arrest her, caring little about the Kazakh Embassy," Steenberg said.

Kazakhstan's Foreign Ministry did not immediately respond to a request to confirm this information.

"In the past days she has not left her mother's apartment. Her sister brings them groceries," Steenberg added.

A Tight Spot For Astana

Anger in Kazakhstan over the plight of the Xinjiang Kazakhs, the province's second-largest Turkic group after the Uyghurs, has proven awkward for the Kazakh government, which prides itself on a booming trade relationship with China.

Astana has raised the issue with Beijing and claimed at the beginning of 2019 to have secured the transfer from China of over 2,000 ethnic Kazakhs.

But the government has not joined international condemnation of Beijing's policies there, and later that year Kazakhstan's then-Foreign Minister Mukhtar Tleuberdi cited reassurances from China that there were no ethnic Kazakhs remaining in China's camps.

Gene Bunin, the creator of the Xinjiang Victims Database that has now profiled close to 50,000 victims of the crackdown, says this claim is likely true.

But he points to evidence that many in the region are still "serving lengthy prison terms on dubious charges" or living under house arrest and tight surveillance.

While campaigns of mass arrests may have slowed down, "the ability for the authorities to detain someone without much formality remains," he told RFE/RL.

Kazakhstan, in turn, has on several occasions suppressed activism related to Xinjiang.

An Almaty resident holds a banner in support of ethnic Kazakhs in Xinjiang on December 9, 2022.

Back in September police arrested two vocal relatives of Xinjiang detainees ahead of a visit to the country by Chinese leader Xi Jinping.

Bilash, the activist, is no longer welcome in his homeland, to which he moved from China, gaining citizenship over a decade ago.

His Atazhurt voluntary organization, headquartered in Kazakhstan's largest city, Almaty, played a key role in exposing Chinese policies in Xinjiang, mostly by publishing video testimonies by former camp detainees.

But in 2019 he was arrested and charged with inciting social tensions and only released after a public outcry and coverage of the case by the international press.

A giant screen broadcasts news footage of Chinese President Xi Jinping visiting the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, at a shopping center in Beijing on July 15, 2022.

In a telephone interview with RFE/RL, Bilash said Zhumatai is likely being punished for her work defending the rights of Kazakh herders in Xinjiang, a matter he said they had discussed.

He likened the importance of her case to that of Sairagul Sauytbay, an ethnic Kazakh who escaped from Xinjiang to Kazakhstan by crossing the border illegally and became the first person in the world to testify about Chinese reeducation camps in an open court in 2018.

While Kazakhstan did not deport Sauytbay back to China, it did not offer her a path to citizenship, either. She now lives with her family in Sweden.

"The difference is that Sairagul spoke out in Kazakhstan," Bilash said. "(Zhumatai) is speaking out while still inside China."