Kazakh exodus from Xinjiang
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The Kazakh exodus from Xinjiang occurred in waves during the 1950s and 1960s after the Communist victory in China. The Kazakhs had settled in the western frontier of China, called Xinjiang, long before the communists seized it in 1949. The initial exodus began in 1950 or the Year of the Tiger, due to the communists' not guaranteeing or overtly denying the Kazakh way of life: tribalism and Islam. Families voted at Barkol and set out to preserve their way of life in the steppes of Kashmir, exiled from their homeland.
This initial journey to Kashmir was offset by the communists as they passed through Chinese territory. The first attack [citation needed] happened at Barkol in Kumul Prefecture and the second near Timurlik. The Kazakh groups that survived the massacres fled into Tibet to survive. Communist aggression was not the only thing that hindered the initial Kazakh exodus; they also suffered illness which killed countless individuals. It took three months for the Kazakhs to cross Tibet and arrive at Srinagar, Kashmir. Of the 4000 families that fled China, only 350 arrived at Srinagar in the initial exodus.
In 1962 the Kazakhs staged another exodus from Xinjiang. This time the Kazakh and members of other ethnic groups fled to the Soviet Union due to mass riots and communist reforms that again imposed on Kazakh traditional way of life.
[edit] Sources
- Clark, Milton J. “How the Kazakhs Fled to Freedom.” National Geographic Magazine. Nov. 1954, pp. 621-644.
- Harris, Lillian C. “Xinjiang, Central Asia and the Implications for China’s Policy in the Islamic World”. The China Quarterly, No. 133 (Mar., 1993), pp. 111-129.
- Moseley, George. Nichols, J. L. (Review Author). “A Sino-Soviet Cultural Frontier: The Ili Kazakh Autonomous Chou.” The Journal of Asian Studies, Vol. 27, No. 3 (May 1968),pp. 628-629.
