The renaissance of Uyghur culture in Kazakhstan

The Digital Yurt app created in Almay by entrepreneur Said Maksimov is bringing young people from this minority closer to their identity. The challenge of the 12 million Uyghurs living in Xinjang and facing the Sinicisation imposed by Xi Jinping.

Almaty (AsiaNews) - A 36-year-old entrepreneur from Almaty, Said Maksimov, founded the app Digital Yurt (the ‘Yurt’ or Digital Tent) to bring together the Uyghur minority community in Kazakhstan, at least on an IT level on Instagram, and in a short time the initiative has expanded far beyond his expectations. It is a start-up built in the spirit of Silicon Valley, which could really open up new horizons for the salvation of Uyghur culture and traditions in Central Asia.

Maksimov already has considerable experience in public relations and marketing, and has already been developing this project for two years, which is now becoming more and more established.

The stated aim is to preserve traditions, to raise levels of knowledge of the Uyghur language and to facilitate relations between members of the Uyghur ethnic group, putting behind them their long history of repression that continues to this day, especially in China. It all started with the typical millennial gesture of opening an Instagram account.

He himself told the Unlock 2024 conference, held at the end of May in Prague: ‘I wanted to start with something simple, addressing mainly young people through social networks, which are usually only used for fun, and not for solving problems’. He then started to disseminate reels, the short dynamic videos recognised by Instagram's algorithm, soon attracting hundreds of people and bringing together more than 50 stable authors who upload material to the platform, increasingly spreading their presence on the internet.

The online format then debuted in a series of in-person meetings, fundraising events to finance Uyghur business in Kazakhstan, and a Montessori kindergarten was even opened in Almaty for Uyghur literacy for children. These are just a few steps in an increasingly elaborate strategy to adapt and modernise the practices already in use, according to Digital Yurt's aims.

Maksimov explains that ‘young people have always wanted to learn about their own history and become part of it, but they are often not attracted to initiatives or places where the older generation dominates’.

This is why the decision was made to switch to digital technology, ‘a very interesting experience, but also a complicated one, because it is difficult to foresee all the difficulties that our community can come up against in today's society’.

Obviously, the main problems come from the other side of the border, in China's Xinjiang where 12 million Uyghurs have been increasingly persecuted since leader Xi Jinping imposed by decree in 2017 that all religions must be ‘Chinese-oriented’, leading to the total eradication of Uyghur culture.

All Muslim minorities in the region, where Kazakhs, Kyrgyz and other ethnic groups also live, have been subjected to severe repression, with more than a million people held in camps and prisons. Religious practice is also prevented by the destruction of mosques and cemeteries, and even the denunciations and appeals of the UN Human Rights Commissioner's Office have been to no avail.

Many members of the Uyghur community in Kazakhstan believe that ‘it is better to keep quiet and not expose oneself’, even reprimanding Maksimov for his ‘risky initiative’, but he replies that ‘we cannot ignore reality’.

In addition to Xinjiang, which Turkish speakers call ‘East Turkestan’, Kazakhstan itself is one of the main ‘homes’ of the Uyghurs, where more than 200,000 of them live, but the diaspora spreads to Turkey, Europe and North America.

Maksimov denounces the negative effect of the Kazakh government's rapprochement with China in recent years, and ‘we must make sure that they do not see us as terrorists, as they accuse us of from Beijing, we want our people to set an example of peaceful coexistence for everyone else as well’.

Photo taken from the Digital Yurt Instagram profile