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HUMAN RIGHTS IN KAZAKHSTAN
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HON. CHRISTOPHER H. SMITH
of new jersey
in the house of representatives
Thursday, December 2, 2021
Mr. SMITH of New Jersey. Madam Speaker, the global competition for ideas between the community of democracies and the People's Republic of China (PRC) is nowhere more apparent than in Kazakhstan, where the PRC has steadily increased its influence in the country since the collapse of the Soviet Union. The PRC wants Kazakh oil, cheap Kazakh labor, and most importantly, Kazakh government help silencing predominantly-Muslim Central Asian peoples, whose reports of genocide on their kinsmen in Xinjiang are inconvenient and embarrassing to the PRC.
While pursuing their goals in Kazakhstan, the PRC pushes its authoritarian governance model, a growing contempt for human rights, and assistance with mass surveillance tools. And too many Kazakh leaders have proven to be all-too-willing accomplices.
Perhaps most troubling is the PRC's pressure on Kazakhstan to keep Kazakhs, Uyghurs, Kyrgyz and other Central Asians silent about the genocide and other gross violations of human rights in Xinjiang. On July 13, 2021, Gulzira Auelkhan, an ethnic Kazakh from the PRC who had emigrated to Kazakhstan but returned to China, gave heartbreaking testimony at the hearing I chaired at the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission about her experience as a survivor of China's concentration camps.
Ms. Auelkhan testified that while she was in the camp, Chinese authorities subjected her to physical, mental, and spiritual torture. One particularly disturbing story was that Chinese authorities inserted needles under her fingernails for attempting to cheat on a Chinese language exam. She also testified that the Chinese Communist Party
(CCP) runs a forced prostitution system inside these camps, where Chinese men routinely rape the female prisoners.
While Chinese authorities released her due to pressure from a Radio Free Asia story that revealed her plight, Gulzira's troubles only increased upon her return to Kazakhstan. Instead of sympathy, Kazakh officials intimidated her, and pressured her family to stop speaking out about the horrors she experienced in Xinjiang. Her refusal to stay silent resulted in her having to flee to the United States in search of a place where she could speak freely about the Chinese concentration camps, and how Kazakhstan rejected her.
The fact that Kazakhstan enables China's genocide in Xinjiang arises from Kazakhstan's dependence upon PRC's massive monetary investments, including in the Belt and Road Initiative, and the malfeasance of kleptocratic Kazakh officials.
Some of these corrupt officials reportedly have ties with the Eurasian Natural Resources Corporation (ENRC), a Kazakh-based company that three billionaire Kazakh businessmen and the Kazakh government founded. ENRC shares ties with members of the former president's family, particularly Timur Kulibayev, who was part of a questionable pipeline deal brokered with Chinese entities. The company has also been investigated by the UK's Serious Fraud Office (SFO).
Sadly the record of gross human rights violations by government officials acting with impunity is not new in Kazakhstan. In 2012, at a hearing I chaired, entitled: ``Kazakhstan: As Stable As It's Government Claims?'', our witnesses provided expert testimony questioning the stability of the country and exposing statewide corruption and massive human rights abuses sanctioned by the Kazakhstan government--including torture and abuse by government security forces.
At the time, the government of Kazakhstan was headed by the former authoritarian ``President for Life'' Nazarbayev, who ruled with an iron fist, snuffing out dissent and fighting hard to obscure the serious human rights and democracy deficiencies that marked his reign.
Today, unfortunately, his oldest daughter, Dariga Nazarbayeva reportedly carries on the family legacy of corruption as a member of the Kazakh Congress.
According to the Eurasia Democracy Initiative, Dariga Nazarbayeva used an illegal passport to open multiple Austrian bank accounts containing millions of dollars, tapping her position and her father's to launder ill-gotten wealth out of the country. A Times of London article recently revealed that she and her son owned over 140 million of property, including the fictional home of Sherlock Holmes, located on 221b Baker Street.
There is little hope that these oligarchs, rich with money stolen from their own people with the assistance the genocidal foreign regime of the PRC, will even-handedly administer justice or respect human rights when they so readily abuse the rule of law, jeopardizing the rights and security of their fellow Kazakh citizens at the apparent behest of the CCP and for their own financial interests.
The Biden Administration must engage the government of Kazakhstan more forcefully, including the use of sanctions under the Global Magnitsky Act. I urge my colleagues to join me in pressing the Biden Administration to elevate and combat the human rights abuses in Kazakhstan, address corruption in this strategic part of the world, and do everything it can to counter the CCP's baneful influence in Kazakhstan.
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SOURCE: Congressional Record Vol. 167, No. 208
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