Uyghurs in Kazakhstan
| Total population | |
|---|---|
| (210,400 (1999)) | |
| Related ethnic groups | |
| Chinese people in Kazakhstan |
Uyghurs in Kazakhstan form the country's 7th-largest ethnic group, according to the 1999 census.
There is a centuries-old history of population movements between the territories which are today controlled by the neighbouring Republic of Kazakhstan and the People's Republic of China. Often this has involved minorities fleeing persecution on one side of the border and finding refuge on the other. By 1897, there were already roughly 56,000 Uyghurs in what is today Kazakhstan, according to the Russian Empire Census. In the 1940s, high-ranking Communist Party officials in the Kazakh SSR planned to create an Uyghur autonomous oblast in a large part of the territory of modern-day Almaty Province. However, as the intention of the government was to bring Xinjiang further into the Soviet orbit rather than afford local Uyghurs genuine autonomy, the plan was scrapped after the Communist victory in China in 1949. During the 1950s in China, ethnic tensions and repression of minority separatist movements led to a mass exodus from Xinjiang to the Kazakh SSR, consisting of Uyghurs, Kazakhs, Mongols, and Kyrgyz. Following the Sino-Soviet split and border conflict, the Chinese government closed the Xinjiang–Kazakh SSR border, both to prevent flight by ethnic minorities, and to prevent the penetration of Soviet secret agents into China.
Uyghurs in Kazakhstan can be roughly divided into three groups based on the time of their ancestors' migration. The earliest, the yärlik ("locals"), are those who have been in the country the longest. They came to various areas of Kazakhstan, especially Semirechie, in the late 19th and early 20th century. Most of the more than 200,000 Uyghurs in Kazakhstan trace their roots to the migrations during the 1950s and 1960s. They tend to refer to themselves as kegänlär, literally "newcomers". Others used to call them kitailik ("Chinese"), but now the more commonly used term has become köchäp kegän; kitailik instead has come to refer to the latest Uyghur newcomers, those who have arrived since the 1990s (also referred to as wätändin, or "people from the homeland"). Today, Kazakhstan is often a transit point for Uyghur migration to Western Europe and North America; most Uyghurs in countries like Norway and Canada come from Central Asia rather than China.
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