Watchdog

The UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention has concluded that the Kazakh government violated international human rights law last year when it detained activist Serikzhan Bilash, who had raised the plight of indigenous ethnic groups in China's northwestern region of Xinjiang.

Responding to a legal petition filed by the Washington-based Freedom Now human rights group, the UN concluded that Kazakhstan “was targeting Mr. Bilash for exercising his rights to freedom of expression and association.”

Kazakh authorities in March 2019 arrested Bilash, a Xinjiang native and naturalized Kazakh citizen who has campaigned for the release of ethnic Kazakhs from so-called reeducation camps in Xinjiang.

Bilash was charged with inciting ethnic hatred and held in custody for five months.

Bilash led the Atazhurt Eriktileri (Volunteers of the Fatherland) group, which in 2018-2019 staged several gatherings of ethnic Kazakhs from Xinjiang who have resettled in Kazakhstan and asked for help securing the release of their relatives and friends from reeducation camps in Xinjiang.

He was fined the equivalent of $300 and released from custody in August 2019.

“The unjust detention of Serikzhan Bilash epitomizes Kazakhstan’s relentless criminalization of peaceful expression,” said Freedom Now Legal Officer Adam Lhedmat. “Rather than heed Serikzhan’s call for international action to end mass human rights abuses in Xinjiang, his own government sought to silence him. We call on Kazakhstan to comply with the UN’s decision, expunge the charges against Serikzhan, and ensure he faces no further prosecution.”

The UN said in August 2018 that an estimated 1 million ethnic Uyghurs and other mostly Muslim indigenous people of Xinjiang were being held in what it described as "counterextremism centers" in northwestern China.

The UN also said millions more had been forced into internment camps.

Freedom Now called Bilash and his Atazhurt Eriktileri group among “the most comprehensive and reliable firsthand resources for information about the Xinjiang camps.”

China says that the facilities are "vocational education centers" aimed at helping people steer clear of terrorism and allowing them to be reintegrated into society.

Kazakhs are the second-largest Turkic-speaking indigenous community in Xinjiang after Uyghurs. The region is also home to ethnic Kyrgyz, Tajiks, and Hui, also known as Dungans. Han, China's largest ethnicity, are the second-largest community in Xinjiang.

PETROZAVODSK, Russia -- Russian historian Yury Dmitriyev, who was sentenced to 13 years in prison on a controversial child sexual-abuse charge that he and his supporters have rejected as politically motivated, has gone on trial on a new charge of producing child pornography.

The Petrozavodsk City Court in Russia's northwestern region of Karelia began the hearing on November 24 behind closed doors, citing coronavirus measures.

Last week, Karelia's Ombudsman Gennady Sarayev said that investigators claim that they found pornographic films on Dmitriyev’s computer and have decided to charge the noted gulag researcher with producing child pornography. Dmitriyev has already been acquitted on a similar charge in the past.

Sarayev said on November 18 that Dmitriyev, who is also the head of the local branch of the Memorial human rights organization, faces up to an additional 10 years in prison if found guilty.

The high-profile case dates back to 2016, when Dmitriyev, who has spent decades researching extrajudicial executions carried out in Karelia under Stalin, was arrested on child-pornography charges based on photographs of his foster daughter that authorities found on his computer.

Dmitriyev said the images were not pornographic and were made at the request of social workers concerned about the child’s physical development.

He was acquitted in April 2018, but the Karelia Supreme Court upheld an appeal by prosecutors and ordered a new trial. He was rearrested in June 2018 and charged with the more serious crime of sexual assault against a minor.

After that trial he was sentenced to 3 1/2 years in July on a conviction for “violent acts of a sexual nature committed against a person under 14 years of age.” He has rejected the case and believes he is being targeted because of his research into the crimes of Soviet dictator Josef Stalin.

Prosecutors, who had asked for 15 years in prison in the high-profile case, said the original sentence was "too lenient" and appealed it. Dmitriyev's defense, meanwhile, insisted their client was innocent and also appealed the case.

On September 29, weeks before the 64-year-old historian was due to be released because of time served, the Karelia Supreme Court accepted the prosecutors' appeal and added another 9 1/2 years onto Dmitriyev's sentence.

Dozens of Russian and international scholars, historians, writers, poets, and others have issued statements in support of the scholar, while the European Union has called for Dmitriyev to be released.

Dmitriyev’s research has been viewed with hostility by the government of President Vladimir Putin. Under Putin, Stalin has undergone a gradual rehabilitation, and the Russian government has emphasized his leadership of the Soviet Union while downplaying his crimes against the Soviet citizens.

Under Stalin, millions of people were executed, sent to labor camps, or starved to death in famines caused by forced collectivization. During World War II, entire ethnic groups were deported to remote areas as collective punishment for alleged collaboration with the Nazis.