China’s Xi praises ‘strong measures’ against protesters in Kazakhstan: state media

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(FILES) In this file photo taken on June 07, 2018 Kazakhstan’s President Nursultan Nazarbayev (R) listens as Chinese President Xi Jinping (not pictured) speaks in the Great Hall of the People in Beijing. – Protesters stormed the mayor’s office in Kazakhstan’s largest city Almaty on January 5, 2022, as unprecedented unrest in the Central Asian nation spun out of control. Sparked by a New Year energy price increase, protests swept across Kazakhstan in a rare challenge to the ex-Soviet country’s authoritarian government. The protests are the biggest threat so far to the regime established by Kazakhstan’s founding president Nursultan Nazarbayev, who stepped down in 2019 and ushered loyalist Kassym-Jomart Tokayev into the presidency. (Photo by Greg Baker / POOL / AFP)

BEIJING, China (AFP) — China’s President Xi Jinping on Friday praised the Kazakhstan government’s deadly crackdown on protesters as “highly responsible” in a message to Kazakh leader Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, state media reported.

“You decisively took strong measures at critical moments and quickly calmed down the situation, showing your position of responsibility and sense of duty as a politician, and of being highly responsible for your country and your people,” Xi told Tokayev in the message, according to the official Xinhua news agency.

© Agence France-Presse