Films about re-education camps for Kazakhs and Uyghurs in Xinjiang were planned to be shown to viewers in Almaty

Kazakhstan’s law enforcement agencies have started to put pressure on the “Jaña Cekara” Film Festival, said Ravkat Mukhtarov, one of the event’s organizers.

Our team is outraged by the direct censorship prohibited in Article 20 of the Constitution of the Republic of Kazakhstan. We are convinced that the festival must take place, so we are forced to move it to an online format. Violation of human rights is the key theme of “Jaña Cekara”, and the pressure on our festival is an exceptional indicator of the violation of our rights to freedom of creativity and self-expression. We need wide publicity, as we still hope to show viewers a movie about real life and the struggle for rights in East Turkestan,” Mukhtarov said in his Telegram channel.

According to the organizer, the special services forced the representatives of the venue to refuse to hold the festival. Mukhtarov explained to the editorial office of “Radio Azattyk” that the festival will now be held in an online format, since no venue can refuse the informal demands of the NSC.

The festival was to be held at the “NeSanatorii” art space in Almaty from September 8-9. Within the framework of “Jaña Cekara” a number of films were to be shown that addressed human rights violations, as well as the identity, language, culture and history of East Turkestan. One of the films was about labor camps in the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region of the PRC.

In addition, the event was to provide a space for discussion of the above topics. Among the speakers at “Jaña Cekara” are Uyghur activist Rushan Abbas, filmmaker David Novak, British human rights activist Aziz Aisa Alkun and Uyghur filmmaker Mukaddas Midjit.