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Chinese foreign minister condemns Kazakh unrest, vows to help fight ‘three evil forces’
- Wang Yi refers to Kazakhstan’s anti-government protests as terrorism and offers cooperation from Chinese law enforcement and security agencies
- Beijing will help to ‘safeguard the political system and regime safety of the two countries’, he says
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Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi has described anti-government protests in Kazakhstan as terrorism and pledged to protect the country against foreign interference, which the Kazakh authorities have blamed for the unrest.
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China would help the Kazakh government to fight terrorism, separatism and religious extremism, the Chinese foreign ministry quoted Wang as saying in a telephone call with Kazakh counterpart Mukhtar Tleuberdi on Monday.
The Chinese ministry’s statement said Tleuberdi had pledged to work with Beijing to crack down on the “three evil forces” – a phrase China has used regularly in relation to Central Asia and to unrest in its far-western Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region.
The phone call came three days after a message from Chinese President Xi Jinping to Kazakh counterpart Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, in which the former voiced support for the Kazakh authorities’ attempts to stifle the unrest but did not follow Tokayev by saying that foreign-trained terrorists were behind the protests.
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Russian troops arrive in Kazakhstan as president issues ‘fire without warning’ order
Russian troops arrive in Kazakhstan as president issues ‘fire without warning’ order
The authorities said 164 people had been killed last week in the most violent scenes since oil-rich Kazakhstan gained independence from the Soviet Union 30 years ago.
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