5-Year Prison Terms for Atajurt Activists Who Burned Chinese Flag |
Crossroads Asia | Politics | Central Asia
5-Year Prison Terms for Atajurt Activists Who Burned Chinese Flag
After protesting Chinese state policies in Xinjiang, and after apparent pressure from Beijing, the group of Kazakhs were charged with “inciting national hatred.”
On April 13, a court in Taldykorgan, Kazakhstan handed down a verdict in the case of 19 activists associated with the Atajurt movement, sentencing 11 to five-year prison terms. The group had staged a dramatic, but peaceful, protest in November 2025 drawing attention to the case of Alimnur Turganbay, an ethnic Kazakh detained last year in Xinjiang.
In protest of the Chinese government’s policies in Xinjiang, the activists burned a Chinese flag and a picture of Xi Jinping, China’s top leader.
Kazakh authorities charged the group with “inciting national hatred.”
Those sentenced to prison terms include Bekzat Maksutkhan, the leader of Atajurt.
Founded by Serikzhan Bilash, Atajurt has worked for years to bring attention in Kazakhstan to those detained in Xinjiang by Chinese authorities. In 2019, Bilash himself faced incitement charges. He ultimately took a plea, paid a fine, and promised to end his activism. As the AFP reported at the time, Bilash explained his plea deal in simple terms: “I had to end my activism against China. It was that or seven years in jail. I had no choice.”
The following year, the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention determined that Kazakhstan’s detention of Serikzhan Bilash in 2019 was arbitrary and concluded that Astana “was targeting Mr. Bilash for exercising his rights to freedom of expression and association.”
Bilash has since left Kazakhstan, while Atajurt continued its work under Bekzat Maksutkhan.
As journalist Chris Rickleton detailed in a December 2025 report for The Diplomat, Atajurt’s protest in November centered on the case of Alimnur Turganbay. Turganbay had been born in China but like many ethnic Kazakhs, moved to Kazakhstan. In 2017, he became a Kazakh passport holder but continued working as a truck driver, carrying goods across the Chinese-Kazakh frontier.
That status theoretically obligated Kazakh authorities to press Beijing for answers over his arrest on the Chinese side of the Kalzhat-Dulata border crossing on July 23, where he had traveled to load up with construction materials bound for Uzbekistan. But the Kazakh Foreign Ministry appears reluctant to press any further after China’s Ministry of Public Security informed its consulate in Urumchi in August that Alimnur “has not received permission to renounce Chinese citizenship and does not meet the conditions for automatic deprivation of Chinese citizenship under Chinese law.”
That status theoretically obligated Kazakh authorities to press Beijing for answers over his arrest on the Chinese side of the Kalzhat-Dulata border crossing on July 23, where he had traveled to load up with construction materials bound for Uzbekistan.
But the Kazakh Foreign Ministry appears reluctant to press any further after China’s Ministry of Public Security informed its consulate in Urumchi in August that Alimnur “has not received permission to renounce Chinese citizenship and does not meet the conditions for automatic deprivation of Chinese citizenship under Chinese........