Kyrgyz Students Vanish Into East Turkestan’s Maw

Musicians, folklorists, and storytellers disappear after being forced back to China.
BY GENE A. BUNIN

Photos gathered from social media and friends of the ethnic Kyrgyz students gone missing in China.

BISHKEK, Kyrgyzstan—Turgunaly Tursunaly was a recognizable figure on Bishkek’s Kyrgyz National University campus.

Distinguishable by his light skin, big glasses, and friendly, boyish demeanor, the ethnic Kyrgyz from nearby China’s East Turkestan colony had already enjoyed a certain degree of fame even before coming to Kyrgyzstan to study.

His grandfather, the late Jusup Mamai, was a “Hero of the Kyrgyz Republic” and a legendary manaschy, or reciter of the Manas epic—a UNESCO intangible cultural heritage described by the organization as an “oral encyclopedia of the Kyrgyz people.”
Mamai, called by some scholars the last great manaschy, could recite a version of the epic that was an incredible 234,500 lines in length. (Homer’s The Iliad, as a reference, is less than 16,000.) 

As Mamai’s grandchild, Tursunaly was the only one among his siblings to continue the family’s legacy.
In addition to his master’s studies at the university’s Manas department, the young manaschy was also an accomplished dancer. 

A frequent TV guest, he ran his own dance studio and had played a major role in bringing the popular “Kara Jorgo” (“Black Stallion”) dance to Kyrgyzstan. 

Last summer, he released a book on the subject—an initial step in a project aimed at further popularizing traditional Kyrgyz dancing in a country still recovering its heritage.
And then, in early October 2018, he went back to East Turkestan and disappeared.

It is hard to imagine what must have been going through the young Tursunaly’s head. 

Departing on a trip that the staff at his department say was only supposed to last a week or two, he would vanish entirely, into the vast Chinese colony that, as the United Nations expert Gay McDougall said last summer, has now become a “no rights zone” that “resembles a massive concentration camp.”
Coverage of East Turkestan has largely been focused on one ethnic group: the Uighurs, who make up East Turkestan’s largest indigenous population at over 10 million. 

In their decades of complaints about discrimination, repression, and a lack of real autonomy, the Uighurs were generally alone, as Beijing successfully portrayed the largely Muslim people’s resistance as terrorist and extremist, both internationally and to its domestic audience. 

For ethnic Kazakhs and Kyrgyz and other Turkic minorities in the region, the fate of the Uighur often elicited more annoyance than sympathy. 

They after all, were largely untouched.
However, all of this would change dramatically under the increasingly authoritarian regime of Chinese dictator Xi Jinping and, most notably, with the appointment of Chen Quanguo as East Turkestan’s party secretary in August 2016. 

Bringing with him much of the same surveillance tactics that he had previously pioneered in Tibet, Chen effectively not only transformed the region into the world’s most sophisticated police state—complete with networks of facial recognition cameras, ID-linked movement restrictions, and overwhelmingly large quantities of actual police—but also oversaw the construction of a frightening network of indoctrination camps and detention facilities now estimated to hold over a million people. 

This time, the repression was comprehensive, reaching not only the Uighurs but most of the region’s ethnic minorities, the Kyrgyz among them.
As a Kyrgyz from East Turkestan, Tursunaly seemed to understand what he was heading into, something that he directly hinted at on his fairly active Facebook page. 

In an Oct. 8 public post—his last—he thanked the Kyrgyz people and everyone who had supported him, while apologizing to anyone he might have offended on account of his youth and inexperience. As a close friend of his confirmed to me, Tursunaly knew the danger but felt compelled to go anyway. The East Turkestan police, according to Tursunaly, had entered his late grandfather’s home and confiscated, possibly destroying, a number of important books—actions that would be consistent with the attempts to eradicate non-Chinese minority language and literature in the region recently. 

By returning to his hometown, he was hoping to save at least some of them.
Tursunaly was not alone, and for many of his friends and classmates the dilemma appears to have come earlier and harsher. 

At Kyrgyz National University’s Russian and Slavic Philology Department, where many of the Kyrgyz students from East Turkestan were enrolled as undergraduates and studied Russian as a foreign language, the main exodus seems to have taken place during the winter break of 2017 to 2018. 

Copies of expulsion orders provided by the department confirm that at least 20 ethnic Kyrgyz students from China were expelled in the following spring and summer for such official reasons as “failure to meet the requirements of the course of study” and “failure to pay tuition”—both resulting from their inability to return to Kyrgyzstan. 

When asked why the students chose to go to China given the political situation there, the dean of the department mentioned that some had their parents in East Turkestan who were threatened with punishment should their children remain abroad.
“Only the [Han] Chinese students returned [to Kyrgyzstan] that spring,” one of the department staff members told me, referring to China’s dominant ethnic majority.

A copy of the official Kyrgyz National University order issued on July 13, 2018, calling for the expulsion of the ethnic Kyrgyz students Chynar Abdylda, Charshibek Alisher, Dinara Askar, Toktonur Belek, Gulzhamal Iminzhan, Gulshat Turdakhun, Aitykul Murat, and Dilkhumar Dolkun for “failure to meet the requirements of the 2017-2018 course of study.” 

All were second-year students in the university’s Russian and Slavic Philology Department and were not able to return to Kyrgyzstan in the spring of 2018 to continue their studies.
Toward the end of 2018, the Committee in Support of the Chinese Kyrgyz—a newly formed grassroots organization—put together a list of the students who had failed to return, naming a total of 45 ethnic Kyrgyz students (and one teacher) from most of Bishkek’s major universities. 

In addition to confirming 25 of these names with the staff at four of the institutions—and confirming that they have, in fact, disappeared—I was also able to find and document an additional 10, in some cases also verifying their situation with friends or others who knew them.
Perhaps the most striking aspect of their absence is the total dissonance with official Chinese rhetoric: that the detentions in East Turkestan are just a caring government’s way to provide “training” and “education” for those residents who have fallen behind, who lack the skills to make a proper living, and who by their provincial nature have become vulnerable to “extremist thoughts.”
In this sense, the accomplished and promising Tursunaly is the brightest of counterexamples, but he is by no means an exception. 

Among the missing are the new parents Azhybek Duisho and Gulqaiyr Aibash, both folk musicians and famous performers who disappeared a year ago. 

Notably gone is a young teacher at Bishkek’s Arabaev Kyrgyz State University, Asanaly Kalil. 

In addition to being a manaschy, Kalil was also a literature professor, music instructor, talk show guest, and book author, with a wife and child in Bishkek who are now separated from him after his return to China last spring.
For these and the dozens of others, it is not at all clear what about them would necessitate such coercive action. 

However, given how the recent incarcerations have disproportionately targeted scholars and cultural leaders—the Uyghur Human Rights Project, a nonprofit organization, has identified over 300 such victims—it is not really surprising that people like Tursunaly, Duisho, Aibash, and Kalil would become easy targets, with their links to the world abroad further adding to the trouble. 

According to the East Turkestan Victims Database, a recent initiative, out of the 762 victims for whom some sort of detention reason has been reported, 103 cases (13.5 percent) involved people being detained for having contact with the world outside China, and 189 cases (24.8 percent) involved people detained for having lived or traveled abroad.
In trying to gauge the universities’ reactions to these disappearances, I generally found sympathy and discontent among the departmental staff and those who were directly acquainted with the victims. The reactions in the administrative bodies tended to be more cynical. 

Anvar Mokeev, a prorector at Manas University, where at least nine students have gone missing, said he never heard any students complain to him that they were being threatened into returning to China. However, he didn’t deny the nature of the situation, saying that it had already been three years since they received new students from the region.
“They go back and their passports are taken,” he told me. 

“It’s a simple tactic. What can we do? It’s their [China’s] internal affairs.”
The “internal affairs” term, having seen ample usage of late, has been especially popular among government officials. 

In a press conference on Dec. 19, President Sooronbai Jeenbekov stressed the need for “the most tactful diplomacy” regarding China’s East Turkestan detentions, while adding that his country could not interfere in China’s “internal affairs” and saying that his people should avoid such loud methods as protests. 

In an interview with Chinese media, Kyrgyzstan Member of Parliament Adil Zhunus, whose brother, the historian Askar Zhunus, was taken to a camp recently, actually praised China’s policies while adding that he had no right to get involved in his brother’s case, as his brother is a Chinese citizen. 

For me personally, as someone who has actively documented the situation in East Turkestan, the local authorities’ stance was made painfully clear when my visits to the universities were brought up in the Jan. 30 issue of Delo No. 

The local weekly tabloid, focusing on politics, law, and crime, ran an entire one-page hit piece that accused me specifically of trying to stir up “anti-China sentiment” in Kyrgyzstan.

The most pressing question, of course, is the fate of the disappeared.
Here, it is difficult not to assume the worst—that they were handcuffed at the border, taken to one of the region’s notorious camps, and forced to endure the cramped conditions, poor food, abuse, and brainwashing reported in previous eyewitness testimonies. 

A Uighur student in the United States offered precisely such an account to Foreign Policy last year. In neighboring Kazakhstan, around 80 ethnic Kazakh students from China chose to not see their families in East Turkestan during last summer vacation, afraid that they too would be detained after another 88 had returned home earlier and then never made it back. 

Searching the East Turkestan Victims Database for words like “student” and “university” results in 33 documented cases of Uighur and Kazakh students who generally either disappeared, had their documents confiscated, or were detained, with the latter making up the majority (23) of the cases. 

For Abdusalam Mamat and his compatriot Yasinjan, Uighur students who had been studying at the Al-Azhar Islamic University in Cairo, the return to China ended with their death in police custody.
It is not impossible that some of the Kyrgyz met with similar misfortune. 

Zhumakary Kozhomkul, a student at the Bishkek Humanities University, was on his way back home to southern East Turkestan but vanished before he could get there. 

A friend of his, still in Kyrgyzstan, said that all contact with him was lost when the other arrived in the regional capital of Urumqi, still more than 600 miles shy of his destination. 

According to the same source, many of the other missing students have become unreachable as well, though one, he said, still occasionally posts on his WeChat—China’s popular chat client—which suggests that his situation might be “relatively good.” 

Duisho and Aibash, the musician couple, are rumored to be under house arrest.
With communications between East Turkestan and the outside world throttled and with calls from the region now often being done under the supervision of the local authorities, getting any sort of reliable information has become very difficult, leaving many to rely on hearsay and simply hope for the best. When asked for commentary regarding Tursunaly’s case, Kyrgyzstan’s Office of the Ombudsman said that the received claims regarding rights abuses have been hard to verify in general, prompting further investigation and checking, before adding: “Regarding the manaschy Turgunaly Tursunaly that you mentioned, we have started checking his case but do not have any information for the moment.”
Still, if rumor is to be believed, Tursunaly’s fate may not be the worst. 

According to a few members of the Committee in Support of the Chinese Kyrgyz, the young manaschy not only has avoided detention but has actually gotten married. 

Unfortunately, given the lack of details, photos, and actual contact with him, it is impossible to say what any of this means in the “open-air prison” that East Turkestan has now become. 

What it means in Kyrgyzstan is very clear, however.
“If he doesn’t return soon,” says the dean of his department, “then we’ll have no choice but to expel him.”

Axis of Evil

China and Russia’s awkward romance
By Jonathan Hillman

Oriental despots: Xi Jinping hosted Vladimir Putin in Beijing to discuss increasing economic and military cooperation between their two countries. June 25, 2016. 

This week, Chinese dictator Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin are capitalizing on President Trump’s absence from two major summits. 

Putin met with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) in Singapore, and Xi will attend the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in Papua New Guinea. 

In Asia, where economics is strategy, Xi and Putin are not only showing up but claiming to champion a new approach to globalization.
Lately, Xi and Putin like calling for openness and inclusivity, appropriating Western language to fuel resentment in many of the places that have benefited from globalization the most. 

They even pledged to link their signature economic visions in 2015, a political act kept alive by endless joint statements and signing ceremonies, including those last week. 

China’s Belt and Road Initiative promises $1 trillion of new infrastructure, trade deals and stronger cultural ties with over 80 countries. 

The Eurasian Economic Union puts Russia at the center of a single market for goods, services, capital and labor.
The problem is not American ignorance of this threat but the absence of a coherent strategy in meeting it. 

“Moscow and Beijing share a common interest in weakening U.S. global influence and are actively cooperating in that regard,” the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency concluded in a 2017 report. 

But unintentionally, the cumulative effect of U.S. sanctions against Russia and tariffs against China could hasten the very threat Washington seeks to avoid: an anti-Western authoritarian partnership between the world’s largest nuclear power and second-largest economy.
That nightmare can still be avoided. 

Thankfully, the Sino-Russian partnership still has an artificial flavor, supported more by leaders-on-high than organic developments on the ground. 

After each round of ceremonial signings and partnership promises, China still towers above Russia in economic and demographic terms. 

With a long history of invasions, Russia’s paranoia about foreign powers approaching its borders will not vanish overnight.
But Russian policymakers must be persuaded to take China’s economic power as seriously as the West’s military power. 

China’s grand ambitions run through Russia and its neighbors, but its investments and infrastructure projects have not yet triggered alarms in Moscow. 

Russia is the gatekeeper for China’s overland push westward, but Xi now holds the keys in the form of investment and respect that Putin, economically and diplomatically isolated from the West, craves.
Washington should highlight the risks of China’s Belt and Road in Russia’s backyard. 

Three of the eight countries with the highest debt risk from Chinese lending are Russia’s close neighbors: Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and Mongolia. 

China can exploit the weakness of small economies that borrow big, as it did when it wrote off a portion of Tajikistan’s debt in exchange for disputed territory in 2011. 

Inevitably, as China’s economic footprint grows, so will its security footprint. 

Sightings of Chinese military vehicles and construction in Afghanistan’s Wakhan Corridor suggest this expansion is already underway.
To take the air out of Xi and Putin’s globalization tale, Trump’s trade policy must be updated. Yesterday, a memorandum of understanding was signed to boost trade between ASEAN and the Eurasian Economic Union. 

China is backing the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, a regional deal that gained momentum when Trump withdrew from the 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership. 

Easier said than done, but the United States urgently needs to get back into the game of offering regional alternatives rather than bilateral ultimatums.
Finally, a bit of old-fashioned diplomacy would go a long way. 

For now, the United States does not need to choose between Russia and China, as President Richard Nixon famously did over four decades ago. 

It would be wiser to work selectively with both sides, toning down the “with us or against us” rhetoric and noting areas of existing cooperation. 

Before reflexively approving the next round of sanctions, American policymakers should carefully evaluate their longer-term consequences, such as encouraging the rise of alternative payment systems, harm to the dollar, and pushing U.S. competitors closer.
With restraint and patience, the United States could reestablish itself as a natural wedge between Russia and China. 

At the very least, it must avoid becoming a bridge that unites them.

Who is at risk from China’s Belt and Road Initiative debt trap?

China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is raising the risk of a sovereign debt default among small and poor countries
By Nikita Kwatra

China BRI will potentially span 68 countries and could have implications for each of these countries’ public debt.

Mumbai -- China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) which seeks to invest about $8 trillion in infrastructure projects across Asia, Europe and Africa, has come under intense scrutiny, not least due to suspicions over China’s intent behind the ambitious project. 

A study by the Centre for Global Development, a Washington-based think tank, analyses one important consequence of BRI: debt.
While the study finds that it is unlikely that the BRI will be plagued with wide-scale debt sustainability problems, it is likely to raise the risk of a sovereign debt default among relatively small and poor countries.
The BRI will potentially span 68 countries and could have implications for each of these countries’ public debt. 

To understand these effects, the study first uses sovereign credit risk ratings and World Bank debt sustainability analysis to identify 23 of the 68 countries currently at risk of debt distress. 

For these 23 countries, the study adds the Belt and Road Initiative lending pipeline into the countries’ overall debt and debt to China as of end of 2016.
They find that eight countries could face difficulties in servicing their debt because of the Belt and Road Initiative. 

These include Pakistan, Djibouti, the Maldives, Laos, Mongolia, Montenegro, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. 

Pakistan, which through the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, serves as the centrepiece of the BRI and is by far the largest country exposed, with China reportedly financing about 80% of its estimated $62 billion debt. 

According to the think-tank, China’s case-by-case approach in dealing with debt relief in the past could prove “problematic”.
One example is China’s acquisition of Sri Lanka’s Hambantota port after the Sri Lankan government failed to service its debt.
Unlike most of the world’s other major creditors, China is not bound to a set of rules on how it addresses debtor repayment problems. 

Currently, China is only an ad hoc participant of the Paris Club, a collection of creditor nations which follow a set of rules in dealing with debtor nations. 

The think-tank advocates applying globally-accepted creditor disciplines and standards to the Belt and Road Initiative.
To do this, they recommend the World Bank and other multilateral banks work with the Chinese government to set the lending standards for the BRI projects.
Another recommendation is to establish a new creditor’s group which would maintain the core principles of the Paris Club.
To mitigate lending risks, China is also recommended to provide technical and legal support to developing countries. 

Finally, the think tank proposes that China should offer debt swap arrangements in support of environmental goals where borrowing country debt is forgiven in exchange for a commitment to an environmental objective, for instance, forest preservation.

China's debt traps

China's Silk Road project runs into debt jam
By Julien Girault
China's dictator Xi Jinping says trade with Belt and Road countries has exceeded $5 trillion

China's massive and expanding "Belt and Road" trade infrastructure project is running into speed bumps as some countries begin to grumble about being buried under Chinese debt.
First announced in 2013 by Xi Jinping, the initiative also known as the "new Silk Road" envisions the construction of railways, roads and ports across the globe, with Beijing providing billions of dollars in loans to many countries.
Five years on, Xi has found himself defending his treasured idea as concerns grow that China is setting up debt traps in countries which lack the means to pay back the Asian giant.
"It is not a China club," Xi said in a speech on Monday to mark the project's anniversary, describing Belt and Road as an "open and inclusive" project.
Xi said China's trade with Belt and Road countries had exceeded $5 trillion, with outward direct investment surpassing $60 billion.
But some are starting to wonder if it is worth the cost.
During a visit to Beijing in August, Malaysia's Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad said his country would shelve three China-backed projects, including a $20 billion railway.
The party of Pakistan's new prime minister, Imran Khan, has vowed more transparency amid fears about the country's ability to repay Chinese loans related to the multi-billion-dollar China-Pakistan Economic Corridor.
China's "new Silk Road" envisions the construction of railways, roads and ports across the globe

Meanwhile the exiled leader of the opposition in the Maldives, Mohamed Nasheed, has said China's actions in the Indian Ocean archipelago amounted to a "land grab" and "colonialism", with 80 percent of its debt held by Beijing.
Sri Lanka has already paid a heavy price for being highly indebted to China.
Last year, the island nation had to grant a 99-year lease on a strategic port to Beijing over its inability to repay loans for the $1.4-billion project.

Ambiguous partner
"China does not have a very competent international bureaucracy in foreign aid, in expansion of soft power," Anne Stevenson-Yang, co-founder and research director at J Capital Research, told AFP.
"So not surprisingly they're not very good at it, and it brought up political issues like Malaysia that nobody anticipated," she said.
"As the RMB (yuan) becomes weaker, and China is perceived internationally as a more ambiguous partner, it's more likely that the countries will take a more jaundiced eye on these projects."
The huge endeavour brings much-needed infrastructure improvements to developing countries, while giving China destinations to unload its industrial overcapacity and facilities to stock up on raw materials.
Chinese dictator Xi Jinping (C) says the initiative is 'not a China club'

But a study by the Center for Global Development, a US think-tank, found serious concerns about the sustainability of the sovereign debt in eight countries receiving Silk Road funds.
Those were Pakistan, Djibouti, Maldives, Mongolia, Laos, Montenegro, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan.
The cost of a China-Laos railway project—$6.7 billion—represents almost half of the Southeast Asian country's GDP, according to the study.
In Djibouti, the IMF has warned that the Horn of Africa country faces a "high risk of debt distress" as its public debt jumped from 50 percent of GDP in 2014 to 85 percent in 2016.
Africa has long embraced Chinese investment, helping make Beijing the continent's largest trading partner for the past decade.
On Monday, a number of African leaders will gather in Beijing for a summit focused on economic ties which will include talks on the "Belt and Road" programme.

'Not a free lunch'
China bristles at criticism.
Sri Lanka has already paid a heavy price for being highly indebted to China

At a daily press briefing on Friday, foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying denied that Beijing was saddling its partners with onerous debt, saying that its loans to Sri Lanka and Pakistan were only a small part of those countries' overall foreign debt.
Stevenson-Yang said China's loans are quoted in dollar terms, "but in reality they're lending in terms of tractors, shipments of coal, engineering services and things like that, and they ask for repayment in hard currency."
Standard & Poor's said Beijing structures the infrastructure projects as long-term concessions, with a Chinese firm operating the facility for a period of 20 to 30 years while splitting the proceeds with the local counterpart or government.
The head of the International Monetary Fund, Christine Lagarde, raised concerns about potential debt problems in April and advocated greater transparency.
"It's not a free lunch, it's something where everybody chips in," she said.