Sauytbay shows her joy and happiness after the verdict. Photo courtesy of the author. All rights reserved.The trial of a woman who had worked in an indoctrination camp in China’s western region of Xinjiang has put the fate of minority Muslims under the spotlight of international media. Beijing’s attempts to suppress the flow of information about its over-policed Xinjiang province – where security forces are locking up, among others, ethnic Kazakhs visiting or returning to China from Kazakhstan – appears to have backfired after a Kazakh court ruled against the deportation of Sayragul Sauytbay to China in early August.
Sauytbay was tried in the languid Kazakh town of Zharkent, near the border with China. On 1 August, the judge ordered her release, delivering a suspended six-month sentence instead for illegally crossing the border. The sentence dismissed the previously-feared possibility of her deportation back to China. The woman, who was tried at Beijing’s request, made a plea during the trial not to be handed over to China, claiming she could face the death penalty for revealing the existence of political “re-education camps” for ethnic Kazakhs in the country. As part of her defence, Sauytbay claimed to have worked for four months in a camp before fleeing to Kazakhstan.
Emboldened by Sauytbay’s revelations, many of her fellow ethnic Kazakhs who moved from China to Kazakhstan have now come out with stories of relatives who they fear may have ended up in such camps. Some of those who managed to escape from the camps have also recounted their stories. The trial indirectly forced the Chinese authorities to admit to their actions in Xinjiang against ethnic Kazakhs, though they claimed that these measures were in place for all citizens and that, ultimately, this was a Chinese internal matter. Meanwhile, Sauytbay’s lawyer has warned that Beijing may still try to seek her extradition, hinting that Sauytbay’s problems may have just begun.
