Dozens of ethnic Kazakh repatriates originally from China appeared at Germany’s consulate in Kazakhstan’s largest city Almaty on October 4 to appeal to German Chancellor Angela Merkel for help in seeking the release of relatives from China’s "re-education camps".

The “re-education camps” are said to hold thousands of ethnic Kazakhs and over a million ethnic Uyghurs from Muslim-majority Xianjiang region in China—it is claimed that they were set up under the pretence of combatting religious extremism.

Ethnic Kazakhs from China have called on Kazakhstan’s authorities for help, but, although the country is Central Asia’s dominant economic power, it finds itself increasingly dependent on Chinese investment that other countries in its region are competing for—that factor appears to have constrained the Kazakh government to the point that it has not been able to have much of an impact on the situation with the camps.

In August, a Kazakh court ordered the release of ethnic Kazakh Chinese citizen Sairagul Sauytbay who was convicted of an illegal border crossing. She will thus not be deported to China, where she would potentially face severe punishment.

In trial testimony, she said Chinese authorities forced her to train "political ideology" instructors for camps in western China's Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. That, she claimed, gave her access to secret documents on a Chinese state programme to "reeducate" Muslims from Xinjiang's indigenous ethnic minority communities—mainly Uyghurs, ethnic Kazakhs, ethnic Kyrgyz, and Hui.

The explosive court case has placed additional pressure on Kazakhstan to intervene or speak out on behalf of ethnic Kazakhs in China, 200,000 of whom have become Kazakh citizens in recent years.

The issue is particularly sensitive for the Kazakh government, which has previously faced a backlash from the ethnic Kazakh population for attempting to lease land to China. The issue led to mass protests across the country in 2016.

Kazakhstan, as China’s “key” partner in the huge One Belt One Road initiative that seeks to invest in parts of Central Asia to create transit hubs for Chinese goods heading to Europe, is currently heavily reliant on China for foreign investment. China’s investments in the ex-Soviet nation include infrastructure projects and the recent launch of a soon-to-be regional financial hub.

The Kazakhs are a Turkic people who mainly inhabit northern parts of Central Asia—largely Kazakhstan, but also parts of Uzbekistan, China, Russia, Mongolia and Kyrgyzstan.