BISHKEK, Kyrgyzstan—Kyrgyz police detained more than a dozen people on Jan. 17 as they dispersed a hundreds-strong anti-Chinese rally in the capital, Bishkek, the biggest public protest to date in Central Asia against Beijing’s growing influence in the region.
Protesters who gathered on the central square demanded curbs on work permits for Chinese citizens as well as a reduction of Kyrgyz debt to China and called for other measures to reduce the Chinese presence, including a ban on Kyrgyz-Chinese marriages.
After the rally ran beyond its allotted time, dozens of protesters started moving toward a building which houses the president and parliament, at which point police started detaining some people and squeezing others out of the square.
Police declined to say how many people they had detained. A Reuters reporter at the scene saw them lead away more than a dozen.
Anti-Chinese sentiment has grown in the former Soviet republic of six million people since an incident at Bishkek’s main power plant a year ago caused a five-day blackout following its upgrade carried out by a Chinese firm. The firm has not been officially charged with any wrongdoing.
Hostility toward Beijing has also been fueled by reports of mass detentions of ethnic Kyrgyz—alongside fellow Turkic Muslims such as Uyghurs and Kazakhs—in China’s western province of Xinjiang.
A United Nations panel of human rights experts said in August 2018 it had received many credible reports that 1 million ethnic Uyghurs in China were being held in what resembled a “massive internment camp that is shrouded in secrecy.”
The Chinese regime has used the excuse that Xinjiang faces a serious threat from Islamist militants and separatists who plot attacks and stir up tensions with the ethnic Han Chinese majority to crack down on the local population in Xinjiang.
Western countries including Canada, France, Germany, and the United States have urged China to shut down camps in Xinjiang.
China is one of the biggest investors in Central Asia and a key trading partner for Kyrgyzstan, which Beijing has made a key part of its “One Belt, One Road' (OBOR or Belt and Road) development project.
Commenting on the protest, Kyrgyz First Deputy Prime Minister Kubatbek Boronov said in a statement that protesters had been misled by fearmongering and that the annual net influx of Chinese to Kyrgyzstan had been below 1,000 people in the last two years.
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