Washington DC [US], May 13 : The Foreign and Security Minister of the East Turkistan Government-in-Exile, Salih Hudayar has strongly criticised Kazakhstan's recent decision to deny entry to Danish anthropologist Dr. Rune Steenberg, calling it a "disgraceful act of submission" to China.
In a statement posted on X, Hudayar questioned, "Has Kazakhstan become China's new 'Kazakh Autonomous Region'?"
His remarks reflect growing concern among Uyghur activists and advocates about the increasing influence of the Chinese government over Kazakhstan's internal and foreign policy decisionsparticularly regarding the sensitive issue of China's treatment of Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslim minorities in the Xinjiang.
Hudayar's statement came in response to a recent article published by Global Voices, a nonprofit network of international writers and bloggers, which reported that Dr Rune Steenberg was denied entry into Kazakhstan on April 12, 2025. Steenberg, a noted anthropologist based in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, leads a European Union-funded research project focused on China's repression of Uyghurs and has previously conducted fieldwork in Kazakhstan without incident.
According to Global Voices, Kazakh border authorities at the Kazakh-Kyrgyz border offered no official reason for the denial. However, Dr Steenberg believes the action is directly tied to his increasingly vocal condemnation of China's systematic campaign of mass detention, forced labour, and digital surveillance targeting Uyghurs, Kazakhs, and other Turkic peoples in the Xinjiang region.
According to the article, over the years, Steenberg's research has shifted from ethnographic fieldwork to active public advocacy and commentary. He now works extensively with exiled Uyghur communities and banned literature, aiming to document human rights abuses that have been widely condemned by international organisations and governments. His barring from Kazakhstan follows a similar case in 2021, when fellow Uyghur researcher Yevgeny Bunin was also denied entry.
Global voices reported that despite being barred from both China and Kazakhstanthe two countries with the largest Uyghur populationsSteenberg remains undeterred. He has vowed to continue his work through remote research methods and by analysing censored and banned materials, ensuring that the repression of Uyghurs and other marginalised communities does not go unrecorded.
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