Dark Shadows - In the Press 2

The Calvert Journal, a London-based online guide to the contemporary culture of the New East: eastern Europe, the Balkans, Russia and Central Asia, has published an extract from Dark Shadows that takes a look at the oralmandar, Kazakhs who have moved to Kazakhstan, their 'historical homeland', under the title Long Way Home.

The extract chronicles the tales of 'returnees' whom the author encountered during her travels across Kazakhstan and into neighbouring Mongolia and China.

Kazakhs getting ready to move on in Mongolia

With intense international media coverage focused in recent months on developments in China's western province of Xinjiang, where around a million Uyghurs, Kazakhs, Kyrgyz and Hui (Chinese Muslims) have been sent to internment camps where they are forced to undergo 're-education', this extract provides a timely reminder that problems have been brewing for quite a while in Xinjiang.

“We were born here, this is our homeland — but now we have to buy it,” grumbled an elderly Kazakh man in August 2007, sitting by the shore of the crescent-shaped glacial Lake Kanas glittering turquoise in the Altai Mountains in the north-western tip of China.

Surrounded by dense taiga giving way to sweeping meadows, this is a prime area for livestock breeding, which is the mainstay of the Kazakh nomadic lifestyle — but this way of life was under threat in this far-flung corner of the world. “Pressure’s increasing with every year,” complained Kayrat, a twenty-something Kazakh speaking under a pseudonym for fear of reprisals from the Chinese government. “We have to move out of here.”