The activist may be put in the wanted list by Kazakh authorities, obviously as the result of Chinese pressures.
by Massimo Introvigne
Last month, a team traveled four thousand kilometers to collect testimonies of ethnic Kazakhs who had escaped Xinjiang and had entered Kazakhstan, and of relatives of others who remain detained in jails and camps in China. Their testimonies were published in Bitter Winter, in a widely read series. The main organizer of the team was Kazakh human rights activist Serikzhan Bilash, who is currently abroad.
The Chinese reaction was quick. A court in Kazakhstan may put Bilash on the wanted list. The probation service appealed to the court with a submission, where it is asked to declare the activist wanted and choose a measure of restraint. A decision will be made on December 14.
Serikzhan Bilash’s lawyer, Shynkuat Baizhanov, said he would be able to comment on the case only after reviewing the materials.
Bilash had been prosecuted in the past for his activism, although one of the cases was recently dropped. Last year, the U.N. Working Group on Arbitrary Detention censored Kazakhstan for having detained Bilash on March 2019.
Bilash says he is afraid he can be stripped of his Kazakh citizenship, and is persuaded that the prosecution is directly related to Chinese pressures against his activities exposing the situation in the transformation through education camps in Xinjiang, including through the recent series of articles in Bitter Winter.
We at Bitter Winter are proud of having published a series telling the truth on the genocidal activities of the CCP against ethnic Kazakhs, and will continue to fight for Bilash’s right to investigate and speak out about the Xinjiang camps. It is an activity for which he should be applauded rather than harassed by Kazakh authorities.
Massimo Introvigne (born June 14, 1955 in Rome) is an Italian sociologist of religions. He is the founder and managing director of the Center for Studies on New Religions (CESNUR), an international network of scholars who study new religious movements. Introvigne is the author of some 70 books and more than 100 articles in the field of sociology of religion. He was the main author of the Enciclopedia delle religioni in Italia (Encyclopedia of Religions in Italy). He is a member of the editorial board for the Interdisciplinary Journal of Research on Religion and of the executive board of University of California Press’ Nova Religio. From January 5 to December 31, 2011, he has served as the “Representative on combating racism, xenophobia and discrimination, with a special focus on discrimination against Christians and members of other religions” of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE). From 2012 to 2015 he served as chairperson of the Observatory of Religious Liberty, instituted by the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs in order to monitor problems of religious liberty on a worldwide scale.
