Chindia Alert: You’ll be Living in their World Very Soon
aims to alert you to the threats and opportunities that China and India present. China and India require serious attention; case of ‘hidden dragon and crouching tiger’.
Without this attention, governments, businesses and, indeed, individuals may find themselves at a great disadvantage sooner rather than later.
The POSTs (front webpages) are mainly 'cuttings' from reliable sources, updated continuously.
The PAGEs (see Tabs, above) attempt to make the information more meaningful by putting some structure to the information we have researched and assembled since 2006.
Image copyright AFPImage caption Past detainees claim they were forced to work making toys and household goods
China is to end a punishment system for prostitution that allowed police to hold sex workers and their clients in custody for up to two years at so-called education centres.
Detainees were forced to work, allegedly making toys and household goods.
The detention system will come to an end on 29 December. Those still in custody will be released, according to Xinhua, China’s state media.
Prostitution remains illegal in China.
It carries punishments of up to 15 days in detention and fines of up to 5,000 yuan (£546).
China’s state media claims the “custody and education” system has helped to maintain a “good social atmosphere and public order” since it was introduced more than 20 years ago.
It added that over time, the system has become less and less appropriate.
The report included interviews with 30 female sex workers from two cities.
It claimed detainees were unable to learn new skills during detention that could help them after their release. The report added that the detainees typically undertake manual labour.
It said: “All of the sex workers we interviewed returned to the sex trade immediately after release.”
A 2013 report by Human Rights Watch interviewed 140 sex workers, clients, police and specialists and found that many sex workers were beaten by police in an attempt to coerce confessions.
One worker claimed she had been deceived into signing a confession.
“The police told me it was fine, all I needed to do was sign my name and they would release me after four or five days,” she said.
“Instead, I was locked up in [a] Custody and Education centre for six months.”
Shen Tingting, director of Asia Catalyst, said the move to abolish forced labour detention centres is positive but only a small step towards safeguarding the rights of sex workers.
“Chinese law and policies focus on prohibition and cracking down on sex work, rather than providing a framework to ensure the health and safety of sex work as a profession,” she said.
In 2013, China announced it had abolished its system of “re-education through labour camps” for petty criminals.
That decision came after several high-profile miscarriages of justice, including a case where a mother was sent to a labour camp after demanding justice for her daughter who had been raped.
However, the abolition did not extend to the “custody and education” system affecting sex workers and their clients.
China isn’t totally abandoning the idea of re-education. Authorities in the country claim a number of camps in the north-west region of Xinjiang are voluntary education camps that help to combat extremism.
However rights groups claim many Chinese Uighur people have been rounded up into the camps and made to criticise or denounce their faith.
HYDERABAD, India (Reuters) – Indian police shot dead four men on Friday who were suspected of raping and killing a 27-year-old veterinarian near Hyderabad city, an action applauded by her family and many citizens outraged over sexual violence against women.
However, some rights groups and politicians criticised the killings, saying they were concerned the judicial process had been sidestepped.
The men had been in police custody and were shot dead near the scene of last week’s crime after they snatched weapons from two of the 10 policemen accompanying them, said police commissioner V.C. Sajjanar.
Thousands of Indians have protested in several cities over the past week following the veterinarian’s death, the latest in a series of horrific cases of sexual assault in the country.
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The woman had left home for an appointment on her motor-scooter and later called her sister to say she had a flat tyre. She said a lorry driver had offered to help and that she was waiting near a toll plaza.
Police said she was abducted, raped and asphyxiated and her body was then set alight on the outskirts of Hyderabad. Four men were arrested.
Sajjanar, the police officer, said the men – two truck drivers and two truck cleaners, aged between 20 and 26 years – had been taken to the spot to help recover the victim’s mobile phone and other personal belongings on Friday morning.
“As the party approached this area today (during the) early hours, all the four accused got together. They started attacking the police party with stones, sticks and other materials,” he told reporters near the site of the shootings.
The men, who were not handcuffed, then snatched weapons away from the police and started firing at them, but were killed after the police retaliated. He did not say how the accused were able to overpower their escorts.
“Law has done its duty, that’s all I can say,” Sajjanar said.
The National Human Rights Commission, a government-funded watchdog, said it had ordered an investigation. “Death of four persons in alleged encounter with the police personnel when they were in their custody, is a matter of concern for the Commission,” it said in a statement.
Indian police have frequently been accused of extra-judicial killings, called “encounters”, especially in gangland wars in Mumbai and insurrections in the state of Punjab and in disputed Kashmir. Police officers involved in such killings were called “encounter specialists” and were the subject of several movies.
People shout slogans as they celebrate after police shot dead four men suspected of raping and killing a 27-year-old veterinarian in Telangana, in a residential area in Ahmedabad, India, December 6, 2019. REUTERS/Amit Dave
‘LONG LIVE POLICE’
The victim’s family welcomed the news the alleged perpetrators had been killed.
“I express my gratitude towards the police & govt for this. My daughter’s soul must be at peace now,” Reuters partner ANI quoted her father as saying.
A Reuters reporter saw the four men’s bodies lying in an open field, all of them face up and barefoot, with their clothes stained with blood, surrounded by policemen.
A large crowd gathered at the site and threw flower petals at police vans in support of the action. Some shouted “Long live police”, while others hoisted police officials onto their shoulders and burst firecrackers.
There was no immediate word from Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government on the incident, but Maneka Gandhi, a lawmaker from his ruling Bharatiya Janata Party, said the police appeared to have over-reached.
“You can’t take the law in your own hands. The courts would’ve ordered them (the accused) to be hanged anyway. If you’re going to shoot them with guns before due process is followed, then what’s the point of having courts, police and law?” she said.
Tough laws were enacted after the 2012 gang rape and murder of a woman in a bus in New Delhi that led to an outpouring of anger across the country, but crimes against women have continued unabated.
Fast track courts have been set up but cases have moved slowly, for lack of witnesses and the inability of many families to go through the long legal process. Some victims and their families have ended up being attacked for pursuing cases against powerful men, often local politicians.
Many Indians applauded the killings.
“Great work #hyderabadpolice ..we salute u,” badminton star Saina Nehwal wrote on Twitter.
In Uttar Pradesh state, where a rape victim was set ablaze on Thursday while she was on her way to court, opposition politician Mayawati said the police there should take “inspiration” from what happened in Hyderabad.
“Culprits should be punished, and if they are not punished then whatever happened in Hyderabad should happen,” the victim’s brother said in hospital.
She was on life support, hospital authorities said, news that could further inflame passions in a country where public anger over crimes against women has grown in recent weeks.
Indian police registered more than 32,500 cases of rape in 2017, according to the most recent government data. But courts completed only about 18,300 cases related to rape that year, leaving more than 127,800 cases pending at the end of 2017.
But some people said the lack of progress in the courts did not mean the police had a free hand to dispense justice.
“We now have to trust that a police force that managed to let unarmed suspects escape their custody, and needed to shoot them dead because they could not catch them alive, is somehow competent enough to have identified and arrested the real culprits?,” Meenakshi Ganguly, South Asia Director at Human Rights Watch, told Reuters from London.
BEIJING, Dec. 2 (Xinhua) — The Chinese government has decided to suspend reviewing applications to visit Hong Kong by U.S. military ships and aircraft starting Monday, foreign ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying said.
China will also take sanctions against some U.S. non-governmental organizations (NGOs) for their role in the disturbances in Hong Kong, Hua said at a press conference.
The NGOs include the National Endowment for Democracy, National Democratic Institute for International Affairs, International Republican Institute, Human Rights Watch and Freedom House.
A lot of facts and evidence have shown that the aforementioned NGOs supported anti-China rioters in Hong Kong in various ways, abetted their extreme and violent criminal behavior and incited separatist activities for “Hong Kong independence”, Hua said, adding that these organizations bear major responsibilities for Hong Kong’s chaotic situation and should be sanctioned and pay their price.
The spokesperson said the United States has seriously violated the international law and basic norms governing international relations, and interfered in China’s internal affairs by signing the so-called Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act of 2019 into law despite China’s firm opposition.
“China urges the U.S. to correct its mistake and stop meddling in Hong Kong affairs or interfering in China’s other internal affairs by any word and act,” Hua said.
China will take further necessary actions in accordance with the development of the situation to firmly defend the stability and prosperity of Hong Kong and safeguard national sovereignty, security and development interests, she said.
Image copyrightREUTERSImage captionHong Kong is part of China but has its own judicial system
The Hong Kong government has proposed changes to extradition laws that could allow transferring suspects to mainland China for trial. The move has further fuelled fears of erosion of the city’s judicial independence amid Beijing’s increasing influence.
The Hong Kong government will also consider extradition requests from Taiwan and Macau after the new changes.
Officials say the change is needed so that a murder suspect can be extradited to Taiwan for trial, and that mainland China and Macau must be included in the change to close a “systematic loophole”.
Hong Kong’s leader Carrie Lam has pushed for the amendments to be passed before July.
What are the changes?
The changes will allow for extradition requests from authorities in mainland China, Taiwan and Macau for suspects accused of criminal wrongdoings, such as murder and rape.
The requests will then be decided on a case-by-case basis.
Image copyrightREUTERSImage captionOver 100,000 protesters took to Hong Kong streets to rally against the government’s proposal.
Several commercial offences such as tax evasion have been removed from the list of extraditable offences amid concerns from the business community.
Hong Kong officials have said Hong Kong courts will have the final say whether to grant such extradition requests, and suspects accused of political and religious crimes will not be extradited.
Why is this controversial?
There has been a lot of public opposition, and critics say people would be subject to arbitrary detention, unfair trial and torture under China’s judicial system.
“These amendments would heighten the risk for human rights activists and others critical of China being extradited to the mainland for trial on fabricated charges,” Sophie Richardson of Human Rights Watch said in a statement.
Lam Wing Kee, a Hong Kong bookseller said he was abducted and detained in China in 2015 for selling books critical of Chinese leaders and charged with “operating a bookstore illegally”.
During a recent protest against the government proposal, Mr Lam said he would consider leaving the territory before the proposal was passed.
“If I don’t go, I will be extradited,” he said. “I don’t trust the government to guarantee my safety, or the safety of any Hong Kong resident.”
Though some pro-Beijing politicians eager to defend China, dispute the criticism of its judicial system.
Image copyrightEPAImage captionHong Kong and China – one country, two systems
The changes have also attracted opposition from the Hong Kong business community over concerns they may not receive adequate protection under Chinese law.
The proposal has already sparked a legal challenge from Hong Kong tycoon Joseph Lau, who was convicted in absentia in a corruption case in Macau in 2014.
Macau’s government has not been able to have Mr Lau extradited because of a lack of extradition agreement between Hong Kong and Macau, but that will become possible if Hong Kong’s legislature decides to amend the extradition laws.
His lawyers argue in a 44-page submission to Hong Kong’s courts that the Macau trial was marred by “serious procedural irregularities that rendered the trial incompatible with internationally mandated standards of fairness”.
Every citizen can request a judicial review like Mr Lau has done, but it’s the High Court that decides whether this will be granted. Most observers say there is little chance Mr Lau’s request will be successful.
Why the change now?
The latest proposal has come after a 19-year-old Hong Kong man allegedly murdered his 20-year-old pregnant girlfriend, while holidaying in Taiwan together in February last year. The man fled Taiwan and returned to Hong Kong last year.
Taiwanese officials have sought help from Hong Kong authorities to extradite the man, but Hong Kong officials say they cannot comply because of a lack of extradition agreement with Taiwan.
Image copyrightGETTY IMAGESImage captionUnder Xi Jinping, Beijing is seeking increasing control over Hong Kong
“Are we happy to see a suspect that has committed a serious offence staying in Hong Kong and we’re unable to deliver justice over the case?” Mrs Lam said on 1 April while responding to media questions.
She added that mainland China and Macau were included in the proposed change to address a “loophole” in current laws.
Isn’t Hong Kong part of China anyway?
A former British colony, Hong Kong is semi-autonomous under the principle of “one country, two systems” after it returned to Chinese rule in 1997.
The city has its own laws and its residents enjoy civil liberties unavailable to their mainland counterparts.
Hong Kong has entered into extradition agreements with 20 countries, including the UK and the US, but no such agreements have been reached with mainland China despite ongoing negotiations in the past two decades.
Critics have attributed such failures to poor legal protection for defendants under Chinese law.
Image copyrightGETTY IMAGES (ALLISON JOYCE)Image captionCow vigilantes in Ramgarh in 2015
A Muslim dairy farmer was stopped late one night last July as he led two cows down a track in rural Rajasthan, south of the Indian capital, Delhi. Within hours he was dead, but who killed him, asks the BBC’s James Clayton – the “cow vigilantes” he met on the road, or the police?
It’s 4am and Dr Hassan Khan, the duty doctor at Ramgarh hospital, is notified of something unusual.
The police have brought in a dead man, a man they claim not to know.
“What were the police like when they brought him in? Were they calm?” I ask him.
“Not calm,” he says. “They were anxious.”
“Are they usually anxious?” I ask.
“Not usually,” he says, laughing nervously.
The dead man is later identified by his father as local farmer Rakbar Khan.
This was not a random murder. The story illustrates some of the social tensions bubbling away under the surface in India, and particularly in the north of the country.
And his case raises questions for the authorities – including the governing Hindu nationalist BJP party.
Cow-related violence – 2012-2019
Image copyrightINDIASPENDRakbar Khan was a family man. He had seven children.
He kept cows and he also happened to be a Muslim. That can be a dangerous mix in India.
“We have always reared cows, and we are dependent on their milk for our livelihood,” says Rakbar’s father, Suleiman.
“No-one used to say anything when you transported a cow.”
That has changed. Several men have been killed in recent years while transporting cows in the mainly Muslim region of Mewat, not far from Delhi, where Rakbar lived.
“People are afraid. If we go to get a cow they will kill us. They surround our vehicle. So everyone is too scared to get these animals,” says Suleiman.
Everyone I speak to in the village where the Khans live is afraid of gau rakshaks – cow protection gangs.
Image copyrightGETTY IMAGES (ALLISON JOYCE)Image captionNawal Kishore Sharma’s cow protection group in 2015The gangs often consist of young, hardline Hindus, who believe passionately in defending India’s holy animal.
They believe that laws to protect cows, such as a ban on slaughtering the animals, are not being fully enforced – and they hunt for “cow smugglers”, who they believe are taking cows to be killed for meat.
Often armed, they have been responsible for dozens of attacks on farmers in India over the last five years, according to data analysis organisation IndiaSpend, which monitors reports of hate crimes in the media.
On 21 July 2018, Rakbar Khan met the local gau rakshak.
There are some things we know for certain about what happened that night.
Rakbar was walking down a small road with two cows. It was late and it was raining heavily.
Then, out of the dark, came the lights of motorbikes. We know this, because Rakbar was with a friend, who survived.
Image copyrightGETTY IMAGES (ENRICO FABIAN)At this point the details become a little sketchier. There are three versions of the story.
The gang managed to catch Rakbar, but his friend, Aslam, slipped away. He lay on the ground, in the mud and prayed he wouldn’t be found.
“There was so much fear inside me, my heart was hurting,” he says.
“From there I heard the screams. They were beating him. There wasn’t a single part of his body that wasn’t broken. He was beaten very badly.”
The documentary India’s Cow Vigilantes can be seen on Our World on BBC World Newsand on the BBC News Channel (click for transmission times)
Aslam says that Rakbar was killed then and there.
But there is evidence that suggests otherwise.
Much of what happened next focuses around the leader of the local cow vigilante group, Nawal Kishore Sharma.
Aslam claims he heard the gang address him by name that night, but when I speak to Sharma, he denies he was there at all.
Image captionNawal Kishore Sharma
“It was about 00:30 in the morning and I was sleeping in my house… Some of my group phoned me to say they’d caught some cow smugglers,” he says.
According to Nawal Kishore Sharma, he then drove with the police to the spot. “He was alive and he was fine,” he says.
But that’s not what the police say.
In their “first incident report” they say that Rakbar was indeed alive when they found him.
“Nawal Kishore Sharma informed the police at about 00:41 that some men were smuggling two cows on foot,” the report says.
“Then the police met Nawal Kishore outside the police station and they all went to the location.
“There was a man who was injured and covered in mud.
“He told the police his name, his father’s name, his age (28) and the village he was from.
“And as he finished these sentences, he almost immediately passed out. Then he was put in the police vehicle and they left for Ramgarh.
“Then the police reached Ramgarh with Rakbar where the available doctor declared him dead.”
Image copyrightGETTY IMAGES (ALLISON JOYCE)Image captionRamgarh at nightBut this version of events is highly dubious.
I go to the hospital in Ramgarh, where Rakbar was taken. Hospital staff are busily going through bound books of hospital records – looking for Rakbar’s admission entry.
And then, there it is. “Unknown dead body” brought in at 04:00 on 21 July 2018.
It’s not a long entry, but it contradicts the police’s story, and raises some serious questions.
For a start, Rakbar was found about 12 minutes’ drive away from the hospital. Why did it take more than three hours for them to take him there?
And if the police say Rakbar gave them his name, why did they tell the hospital they didn’t know who he was?
Nawal Kishore Sharma claims to know why. He paints a very different picture of what happened to Rakbar.
He tells me that after picking up Rakbar, they changed his clothes.
He then claims to have taken two photos of Rakbar – who at this point was with the police.
Sharma says that he went to the police station with the police. He claims that’s when the beating really began.
“The police injured him badly. They even beat him with their shoes,” he says.
“They kicked him powerfully on the left side of his body four times. Then they beat him with sticks. They beat him here (pointing at his ribs) and even on his neck.”
At about 03:00 Nawal Kishore Sharma says he went with some police officers to take the two cows to a local cow shelter. When he returned, he says, the police told him that Rakbar had died.
Rakbar’s death certificate shows that his leg and hand had been broken. He’d been badly beaten and had broken his ribs, which had punctured his lungs.
According to his death certificate he died of “shock… as a result of injuries sustained over body”.
I ask the duty doctor at the hospital whether he remembers what Rakbar’s body was like when the police brought it in.
“It was cold,” he says.
I ask him how long it would take for a body to become cold after death.
“A couple of hours,” he replies.
“I don’t want to talk about Rakbar’s case,” says Rejendra Singh, chief of police of Alwar district, which includes Ramgarh.
Since Rakbar’s murder several police officers have been suspended. I want to know why.
He looks uneasily at me.
“There were lapses on the police side,” he says.
I ask him what those lapses were.
“They had not followed the regular police procedure, which they were supposed to do,” he says. “It was one big lapse.”
Three men from Nawal Kishore Sharma’s vigilante group have been charged with Rakbar’s murder. Sharma himself remains under investigation.
The vigilante group and the police blame each other for Rakbar’s death, but neither denies working together that night.
The way Sharma describes it, the police cannot be everywhere, so the vigilantes help them out. But it’s the police that “take all the action” he says.
Image copyrightGETTY IMAGES (ENRICO FABIAN)Image captionNawal Kishore Sharma inspects a lorry transporting cows (October 2015)Much police activity in Rajasthan is focused on stopping cow slaughter.
Across the state there are dozens of formal cow checkpoints, where police stop vehicles looking for smugglers who are taking cows to be killed.
I visited one of the checkpoints. Sure enough police were patiently stopping vehicles and looking for cows.
The night before officers had had a gun battle with a group of men after a truck failed to stop.
These checkpoints have become common in some parts of India. Sometimes they are run by the police, sometimes by the vigilantes, and sometimes by both.
This gets to the heart of Rakbar’s case.
Human rights groups argue that his murder – and others like his – show that in some areas the police have got too close to the gangs.
Image copyrightGETTY IMAGES (ALLISON JOYCE)Image captionThe vigilantes find what they are looking for (November 2015)“Unfortunately what we’re finding too often is that the police are complicit,” says Meenakshi Ganguly of Human Rights Watch, which published a 104-page report on cow-related violence in India this week.
In some areas, police have been reluctant to arrest the perpetrators of violence – and much faster to prosecute people accused of either consuming or trading in beef, he says.
Human Rights Watch has looked into 12 cases where it claims police have been complicit in the death of a suspected cow smuggler or have covered it up. Rakbar’s is one of them.
But this case doesn’t just illustrate police failings. Some would argue that it also illustrates how parts of the governing BJP party have inflamed the problem.
Gyandev Ahuja is a larger-than-life character. As the local member of parliament in Ramgarh at the time when Rakbar was killed he’s an important local figure.
He has also made a series of controversial statements about “cow smugglers”.
After a man was badly beaten in December 2017 Ahuja told local media: “To be straightforward, I will say that if anyone is indulging in cow smuggling, then this is how you will die.”
After Rakbar’s death he said that cow smuggling was worse than terrorism.
Image copyrightGETTY IMAGES (ENRICO FABIAN)Image captionNails used by the vigilantes to force lorries to stopGyandev Ahuja is just one of several BJP politicians who have made statements that are supportive of the accused in so-called “cow lynchings”.
One of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ministers was even photographed garlanding the accused murderers in a cow vigilante case. He has since apologised.
Meenakshi Ganguly of Human Rights Watch says it is “terrifying” that elected officials have defended attackers.
“It is really, at this point of time, something that is a great concern, because it is changing a belief into a political narrative, and a violent one,” he says.
The worry is that supportive messages from some of the governing party’s politicians have emboldened the vigilantes.
No official figures are kept on cow violence, but the data collected by IndiaSpend suggests that it started ramping up in 2015, the year after Narendra Modi was elected.
IndiaSpend says that since then there have been 250 injuries and 46 deaths related to cow violence. This is likely to be an underestimate because farmers who have been beaten may be afraid to go to the police – and when a body is found it may not be clear what spurred the attack. The vast majority of the victims are Muslims.
Image copyrightGETTY IMAGES (ENRICO FABIAN)Image captionA cow shelter in RamgarhA BJP spokesman, Nalin Kohli, emphatically rejects any connection between his party and cow violence.
“To say the BJP is responsible is perverse, inaccurate and absolutely false,” he tells me.
“Many people have an interest in building a statement that the BJP is behind it. We won’t tolerate it.”
I ask him about Gyandev Ahuja’s inflammatory statements.
“Firstly that is not the party’s point of view and we have very clearly and unequivocally always said an individual’s point of view is theirs, the point of view of the party is articulated by the party.
“Has the BJP promoted him or protected him? No.”
But a month after this interview, Ahuja was made vice-president of the party in Rajasthan.
Shortly afterwards, Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited Rajasthan – publicly slapping Ahuja on the back and waving together at crowds of BJP supporters.
In Mewat I speak to Rakbar’s wife, Asmina.
“Show me how you raise seven children without a husband. How will I be able to raise them?” she says, wiping away tears.
“My youngest daughter says that my father went to God. If you ask her, ‘How did he go to God?’ she says, ‘My father was bringing a cow and people killed him.’
“The life of an animal is so important but that of a human is not.”
The trial of the three men accused of his murder has yet to take place, but perhaps we will never know what really happened to Rakbar.
In November 2015, photographer Allison Joyce spent a night following Nawal Kishore Sharma’s vigilantes in the countryside near Ramgarh. One of her photographs shows a police officer embracing Sharma after a shootout between the vigilantes and a suspected cow smuggler.
Though the police now accuse the cow vigilantes of killing Rakbar Khan, and the vigilantes accuse the police, the photograph illustrates just how closely they worked together.
Image copyrightGETTY IMAGES (ALLISON JOYCE)In the Indian media there have been claims that the police took the two cows that Rakbar had been transporting to a cow shelter, as Rakbar lay dead or dying in a police vehicle.
There are also claims that the police stopped and drank tea instead of taking Rakbar to hospital.
Whatever they did, they did not take Rakbar to hospital immediately.
Image captionAibota Serik says her father has disappeared into China’s network of detention centres
The Chinese government calls them free “vocational training centres”; Aibota Serik, a Chinese Kazakh whose father was sent to one, calls them prisons.
Her father Kudaybergen Serik was a local imam in Tarbagatay (Tacheng) prefecture of China’s western Xinjiang region. In February 2018 the police detained him and Aibota hasn’t heard from her father since then.
“I don’t know why my father was imprisoned. He didn’t violate any laws of China, he was not tried in a court,” she says, clutching a small photo of him, before breaking down in tears.
I met Aibota together with a group of other Chinese Kazakhs in Almaty, Kazakhstan’s largest city. They gathered in a small office to petition the Kazakh government to help secure the release of their relatives who had disappeared in “political re-education camps”.
There are more than a million Kazakhs living in China. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, thousands moved to oil-rich Kazakhstan, encouraged by its policy to attract ethnic Kazakhs. Today, these people feel cut off from their relatives who stayed in China.
Image captionNurbulat Tursunjan says the Chinese authorities have confiscated his parents’ passports
Nurbulat Tursunjan uulu, who moved to the Almaty region in 2016, says his elderly parents are unable to leave China and come to Kazakhstan because the authorities took away their passports.
Another petitioner, Bekmurat Nusupkan uulu, says that relatives in China are afraid to talk on the phone or on the popular Chinese messaging app WeChat. And they are right to be afraid, he says.
“My father-in-law visited me in February 2018. From my place, he called his son in China, he asked how he was and so on. Shortly after that his son Baurzhan was detained. He was told that he had received phone calls from Kazakhstan two or three times and was sent to a political camp.”
Human Rights Watch says detainees are held “without any due process rights – neither charged nor put on trial – and have no access to lawyers and family”.
Image copyrightREUTERSImage captionChina insists its detention centres, such as this one in the city of Kashgar, are for “vocational training”
Orynbek Koksybek is an ethnic Kazakh who spent several months in camps.
“I spent seven days of hell there,” he says. “My hands were handcuffed, my legs were tied. They threw me in a pit. I raised both my hands and looked above. At that moment, they poured water. I screamed.
“I don’t remember what happened next. I don’t know how long I was in the pit but it was winter and very cold. They said I was a traitor, that I had dual citizenship, that I had a debt and owned land.”
A week later Mr Koksybek was taken to a different place where he learnt Chinese songs and language. He was told he would leave if he learnt 3,000 words.
Image captionOrynbek Koksybek says he was thrown into a pit
“In Chinese they call it re-education camps to teach people but if they wanted to educate, why do they handcuff people?
“They detain Kazakhs because they’re Muslims. Why imprison them? China’s aim is to turn Kazakhs into Chinese. They want to erase the whole ethnicity,” he says.
It is not possible to independently verify Orynbek Koksybek’s story, but his account is similar to many documented by Human Rights Watch and other activists.
The Chinese embassy in Kazakhstan has not replied to the BBC’s request for comment, but the Chinese authorities have been quoted in state media as saying the camps are “vocational training centres”, which aim to “get rid of an environment that breeds terrorism and religious extremism”.
The Kazakh government says that any restrictions on Chinese citizens in China are their internal matter, and it does not interfere. However, Kazakhstan says it will try to assist any Kazakh citizens who are detained in China.
Image copyright AFP
CHINDIA ALERT: You'll be living in their world, very soon 