Language Research

According to news reports from June 19, 2000 Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev called for creating a fund for the protection of the Russian language. He said, “Kazakhs need the Russian language like bread, every day.” He noted as well that Kazakh is the state language in the country, while Russian is the official language used on the same terms as the state language.

Speaking at a press conference in Almaty on October18, 2000, Yurii Bunakov who is one of the leaders of Kazakhstan's Russian minority suggested that in order to prevent further Russian emigration, the Kazakh leadership should postpone the implementation of legislation calling for all business correspondence to be conducted in Kazakh until 2003. Bunakov said that special programs should be organized to help Russian-speakers learn the Kazakh language. Bunakov also argued that more Russians should be appointed to government posts. He noted that only 8% of government employees are Russians, although Russians account for 40% of the country's population.

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Updated (February 2004)

THE NEWSPAPER ARTICLE ABOUT UIGHURS

Kazakhstan's sizeable Uighur population has been shocked by a newspaper report describing them as separatists and terrorists.

The article “Kazaks face a hidden threat” was published in Kazakhskaya Pravda at the beginning of January; however, controversy over its content has not abated yet.

According to an author of the article, Aliya Akhmetova, illegal Uighur immigrants from eastern Turkmenistan and XUAR (the Xinjiang-Uighur Autonomous Republic in China) plan to abuse kindness and openheartedness of the Kazak people and to spread extremism.

The Kazak Minister of Interior does not consider the Uighurs living in the country to be dangerous. According to him, they are the citizens just like any other ethnic groups. The media should not plant seeds of hatred among the people.

Kakharman Hojamberdi, one of the leaders of Kazakhstan's Uighurs, believes that pro-China forces in Kazakhstan and the Chinese security services are behind the article. “China is afraid that the Uighur Diaspora might become more politically active, so they constantly try to control and discredit the Uighur people,” he said.

According to him, Kazakhstan's partnership with China is becoming more important than human rights. Kazakhstan refuses to admit refugees from China, but refugees from Afghanistan are allowed to enter. In the late 90s, several Uighurs were handed back to the Chinese authorities, who then shot them.

The Uighurs are a Turkic Muslim people who have inhabited the region for millennia. Currently around 220,000 of them live in Kazakhstan, constituting the largest Uighur community outside China, which is home to roughly fifteen million members of this ethnic group.

Source: Minelres News, IWPR: Reporting Central Asia, No. 259, January 23, 2004, by Galima Bukharbaeva, Almaty, http://lists.delfi.lv/pipermail/minelres/2004-January/003171.html

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