A Plea for a Husband, a Tag on the Ankle: Kazakhstan's Crackdown Reveals China's Long Shadow

Just this summer, Guldariya Sherizatkyzy sat in her living room outside Almaty, telling journalists the story of her husband, a truck driver who vanished after traveling to the Chinese border for work. Now, as the year ends, she is confined to that same home, an electronic tag around her ankle—punishment for protesting for his release.

Her husband, Alimnur Turganbay, is one of thousands of cases documented by the Almaty-based rights group Atajurt, which rose to prominence exposing Beijing's 'Strike Hard' campaign in Xinjiang. That crackdown led to over a million arbitrary incarcerations of Muslims in the region. But now, Atajurt itself is in the crosshairs of Kazakhstan’s legal system. Following a small but provocative protest on November 13, thirteen of its activists are jailed and five others, including Guldariya, are under house arrest.

Critics argue that the group’s decision to burn a portrait of Chinese leader Xi Jinping and a Chinese flag did little to help Alimnur’s case or their own. But for Kazakhstan's China-friendly authorities, these activists were branded as enemies of the state long before the protest. They now face charges of inciting racial hatred, which could carry prison sentences of up to ten years.

The pressure on Atajurt has steadily increased under President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, a fluent Mandarin speaker and self-professed Sinophile. His stance crystallizes Kazakhstan's geopolitical tightrope walk between its powerful neighbor and its own citizens' concerns.

"Kazakhstan should not become a territory of the so-called global anti-Chinese front."
- President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, in a December 2019 interview with Deutsche Welle

Tokayev has suggested that international reports on Xinjiang are unreliable and that concerns have been “inflated” by U.S.-China tensions. This official line has left families like Guldariya's feeling abandoned by their own government.

Atajurt’s founder, Serikzhan Bilash, who fled Kazakhstan and now lives in the U.S., supports the activists' desperate measures. "Guldariya protested for her husband outside the Chinese consulate in Almaty. She went all the way to Astana, and nobody listened," Bilash told The Diplomat. He fears the group will soon be outlawed entirely.

"With Ukraine and Gaza, the world is forgetting that people in Xinjiang are suffering every day," Bilash added. "Now, I think, the world will know about Alimnur’s case." For now, Guldariya waits under house arrest, a stark symbol of the personal cost of speaking out in the shadow of a superpower.