ALMATY – Fleeing with their religion from Chinese restrictions, a growing number of Uighur Muslims are leaving Xinjiang to find a warmer reception in Muslim majority Kazakhstan.
“Uighur Muslims want their religion and want to practice their religion freely,” Imam Knanat Ali, the imam of the blue-domed Prophet Muhammad Mosque in the industrial north of Almaty city, told Bloomberg Business Week on Tuesday, January 6.
“In China this is strictly controlled, so we see many Uighurs come here during Ramadan to pray, to fast, to learn more knowledge about Islam,” said Ali, who has presided over the mosque for three years.
Every year during Ramadan, the imam gets busy when Uighurs from Muslim majority district of Xinjiang flee to Almaty to be able to observe thee religious month.
Taking the journey of about 235 miles (380 kilometers), they get a warm reception among Muslims in the Kazakh city. In their home, they risk fines or detention for wearing veils or growing beards and some are warned against observing Ramadan.
The journey has encouraged more Uighurs to boost their relations with their Muslim neighbors even as China is boosting ties with its neighbor to rebuild the ancient Silk Road route.
China has displaced Russia as Kazakhstan’s biggest trading partner with the two-way relationship accounting for around 70 percent of China’s trade with central Asia, and China is the biggest foreign investor in the country’s oil and gas sector.
Uighur Muslims are a Turkish-speaking minority of eight million in the northwestern Xinjiang region.
Xinjiang, which activists call East Turkestan, has been autonomous since 1955 but continues to be the subject of massive security crackdowns by Chinese authorities.
Rights groups accuse Chinese authorities of religious repression against Uighur Muslims in Xinjiang in the name of counter terrorism.
Close Relations
In Almaty, Uighur Muslims have developed close relations with other Muslim communities.
Uighurs have “quite a balanced position” with other ethnic groups in Kazakhstan, said Konstantin Syroezhkin, chief research fellow of the state-sponsored Kazakhstan Institute for Strategic Studies.
“They’re not restricted here,” Syroezhkin said.
“There are around 260,000 Uighurs living in the country and they’re fully assimilated in the Kazakh society. Kazakhstan doesn’t support a policy of ethnic separatism.”
Uighur communities in Almaty, the former capital of Kazakhstan, live in compact, closely-knit neighborhoods where they have their own cafes, restaurants and mosques.
That kinship prompted hundreds to rally in Almaty after riots in Xinjiang’s capital Urumqi in July 2009.
“During the 2009 riots, Uighur prayers here were crying because we all had relatives in Xinjiang,” said a 65-year-old mosque worker known as “Auntie Sonya” who moved to Almaty from Xinjiang in the late 1960s.
“We didn’t know who was responsible for this conflict and who was guilty, but we felt for them because all Uighurs are family.”
About 1.5 percent of Kazakhstan’s population are Uighurs, a Turkic language-speaking group, and many live in the Almaty area, says London-based Minority Rights Group International.
“We Uighurs are brothers and sisters; we care a lot about what’s happening in Xinjiang,” Ali said.
“The Uighur rebellion” in Xinjiang has sprouted because “the Chinese government punishes them for their religion.”
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