Central Asia - General Discussion Thread

Daniyar Abdyrakhmanov, a 37-year-old from Jany-Jer, a village in the Batken region in southern Kyrgyzstan, has spent half his life toiling in warehouses and at construction sites in Russia. Two of his three brothers still work there. His wife, a schoolteacher, hails from a neighbouring village. But they met in Moscow, where she worked as a shop assistant. When their son was two years old, they left him with his grandparents and went back to Russia to earn money.

Mr Abdyrakhmanov’s story is typical. In Batken in the Fergana Valley, close to Kyrgyzstan’s borders with Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, it is rare to find a family without at least one member working in Russia. Mr Abdyrakhmanov had no desire to leave the fertile and scenic region of his birth. But working in Moscow he made three times the average wage back home, where opportunities are mostly limited to growing rice, apricots and walnuts.

Remittances were worth about a third of gdp in Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan in 2021, according to the World Bank, making them some of the world’s most remittance-dependent countries. Money sent back from Russia, which is relatively cheap and easy to reach and has a familiar language, is a crucial lifeline. Last year some 82% of remittances to Kyrgyzstan came from Russia; for Tajikistan, the figure was 76%.

Without remittances, the number of poor Kyrgyz would rise substantially, reckons the government. In Batken, the country’s poorest region, where 35% of people already subsist on just over $1 a day, the share might rise to 50%. Labour migration is so central to these countries’ economies that even the pandemic barely disrupted it. Though some migrants came home in 2020, they left again as soon as they could. Remittances to Kyrgyzstan rose between 2019 and 2021.

But Russia’s invasion of Ukraine may cut that lifeline. The World Bank predicts that Kyrgyzstan’s economy will shrink by 5% this year. One big reason is that it expects remittances to fall by nearly a third as migrants lose their jobs in Russia’s sanctions-hit economy. The fall of the rouble earlier this year also temporarily reduced the value of the money they sent home, though the currency has since recovered. Remittances to Tajikistan will drop by more than a fifth, the World Bank predicts; gdp will shrink by 2%. The share of Tajik households who cannot afford enough nutritious and healthy food is likely to rise from 20% to 36% as a result.

The experience of Mr Abdyrakhmanov’s family suggests that life for migrants in Russia is already getting tougher: one of his brothers lost his job and is heading home. But so far, there has been no mass exodus. Migrants who still have their jobs say they are planning to stay put for now.

Fears of an exodus from Russia have sped up the efforts of Central Asian governments to try to diversify their sources of remittances. They have been pushing migrants to seek work in richer countries that offer higher salaries and better labour rights. Government-funded training centres in Uzbekistan have begun teaching Japanese and Korean to would-be migrants. Tajik and Kyrgyz labourers have begun picking fruit and vegetables in Britain, which has emerged as an unlikely destination for Central Asian migrants because of post-Brexit labour shortages.

Nonetheless, most migrants are still heading to Russia, sanctions notwithstanding. A worried-looking man who recently dropped into a government-run support centre for would-be migrants in Osh, Kyrgyzstan’s second city, is typical. He asked staff to check if his name was on Russia’s migration blacklist, which bans labourers who break the country’s employment rules. When they told him that he was in the clear, he left the office with a wide smile on his face.

ALMATY, Kazakhstan — Ahead of Chinese President Xi Jinping's official visit to Kazakhstan later this week, many Kazakhs who have been demanding the release of their relatives from camps in China's northwestern region of Xinjiang have found themselves under pressure from authorities.

On September 12, three women who have been demanding that the Kazakh government assist in gaining the release of their relatives were forced from a bus in Almaty that was heading to the southern city of Shymkent.

One of the women, Gulfia Qazybek, told RFE/RL by phone that law enforcement officers did not explain why they were taking her and the other women to the police station, saying simply that it had been ordered by their supervisors.

The two other women forced off the bus with Qazybek were Gauhar Qurmanalieva and Khalida Aqytkhan.

Two days earlier Qurmanalieva told RFE/RL that two activists who had demanded their relatives' release from Chinese custody had been sentenced to 15 days in prison on unspecified charges.

She added that another activist, Nurzat Ermekbai, was held in police custody for four hours on the same day.

Qurmanalieva also said that she and seven other men and women who have staged rallies demanding their relatives' release from Chinese penitentiaries were summoned to the Almaty city administration on September 9.

They were told by a person who identified himself as a representative of the Foreign Ministry that they would face up to 15 days in jail if they appeared in Nur-Sultan, the capital, and staged rallies there on the eve of Xi's visit, which is scheduled for September 14.

She added that police forcibly took her and her 15-year-old daughter to a police station, warning of "serious repercussions" if she and other activists staged protests in Nur-Sultan during Xi's visit.

"If you travel to the capital, the Chinese government will impose pressure on your relatives there in Xinjiang. They will not only be unable to come to Kazakhstan, but they will never be released from prison," Qurmanalieva said, quoting the officials.

Qurmanalieva said she and other protesters still planned to be in the capital when Xi visits Kazakhstan, the first trip abroad by the Chinese president since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Last week, several men and women held a rally in Kazakhstan's largest city, Almaty, urging Kazakh President Qasym-Zhomart Toqaev to raise the issue of their relatives, who they say are being illegally held in custody in Xinjiang, during his talks with Xi.

The United Nations last month issued a report citing "appalling treatment" of the region's indigenous people, including Kazakhs, Uyghurs, and other mostly Turkic-speaking Muslim ethnic groups, in Xinjiang.

The report by outgoing UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet authoritatively cited "arbitrary and discriminatory detention" of Uyghurs and other Muslims and said China may have committed crimes against humanity in Xinjiang.

China, which tried to block the release of the report, says the camps are necessary to curb terrorism, separatism, and religious radicalism.

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