China’s ‘prison-like re-education camps’ strain relations with Kazakhstan as woman asks Kazakh court not to send her back

Kazakhstan seeks review of detentions of its citizens as woman accused of crossing border illegally tells of forced work at ‘prison’ for 2,500 ethnic Kazakhs

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Sayragul Sauytbay, an ethnic Kazakh Chinese national and former employee of the Chinese state, is accused of illegally crossing the Kazakhstan border. She has spoken about China’s “re-education camps” in her court testimony. Photo: AFP

Published: 4:09pm, 17 Jul 2018Updated: 9:21pm, 17 Jul 2018

Secretive “re-education camps” allegedly holding hundreds of thousands of people in a Muslim-majority region in western China are the focus of an explosive court case in Kazakhstan, testing the country’s ties with Beijing.

On trial is Sayragul Sauytbay, an ethnic Kazakh Chinese national who is accused of illegally crossing the border to join her husband and two children in Kazakhstan.

But it is the 41-year-old’s testimony about her forced work in the camp system in the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region that has drawn the most attention.

Beijing has stepped up a crackdown in Xinjiang against what it calls separatist elements.

At a public hearing, Sauytbay said she was granted access to classified documents that shed light on the sprawling network of re-education centres.

Sayragul Sauytbay, accused of illegally crossing the Chinese border to join her family in Kazakhstan, said she was forced to work in what China called “a political camp” but was “a prison in the mountains”. Photo: AFP

China’s predominantly Muslim ethnic minority groups are believed to make up the majority of the camps’ populations.