Kazakhstan

World News

Kazakh Flight Crashes, Killing At Least 12 And Injuring 54

12:22pm December 27, 2019

by Laurel Wamsley

The plane was a Dutch-built Fokker 100 aircraft operated by Bek Air, which bills itself as Kazakhstan's first low-cost carrier. Officials said the plane's tail hit the runway twice during takeoff.

Serikjan Bilash (left), co-founder of Atajurt, and wife Leila Adilzhan in Almaty, Kazakhstan. Per the terms of a plea deal, Bilash can't work in political activism for the next seven years, which includes calling out China's repression of Kazakhs.

An Advocate For Kazakhs Persecuted In China Is Banned From Activism In Kazakhstan

11:52am October 26, 2019

by Emily Feng

Serikjan Bilash signed a plea deal after Kazakh officials charged him with "inciting ethnic tensions" for his work documenting repression against Kazakhs and in China's Xinjiang region.

Aibota Zhanibek was born in China and now lives in Almaty, Kazakhstan. Members of her family, who are Muslim ethnic Kazakhs, have been detained in China's northwestern region of Xinjiang.

China Has Begun Moving Xinjiang Muslim Detainees To Formal Prisons, Relatives Say

11:09pm October 08, 2019

by Emily Feng

Muslim minorities in the northwestern region are targets of a sweeping security operation. Officials say most residents have been returned to society, but relatives say many are sentenced to prison.

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Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev says he will leave his post after nearly 30 years in office. He's seen here at the Akkorda Palace in Astana, Kazakhstan, in 2016.

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Nazarbayev Resigns As Kazakhstan's President; Was First Elected In 1991

4:58pm March 19, 2019

by Bill Chappell

Nazarbayev is the only president Kazakhstan has ever known. He first rose to authority as a Communist Party official — and he's been accused of human rights abuses.

Relatives of people missing in China's western region of Xinjiang hold up photos of their family members at an office of a Chinese Kazakh advocacy organization in Almaty, Kazakhstan.

China To Let 2,000 Ethnic Kazakhs Relinquish Citizenship And Leave The Country

6:30am January 10, 2019

by Sasha Ingber

The announcement, from Kazakhstan's Foreign Ministry, comes after reports of massive repression of ethnic Muslim minorities in far western China.

An ethnic Kazakh woman tried to cancel her Chinese citizenship after she married and moved to Kazakhstan. When she crossed back into China last year, the problems began.

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'They Ordered Me To Get An Abortion': A Chinese Woman's Ordeal In Xinjiang

7:01am November 23, 2018

by Rob Schmitz

An ethnic Kazakh Chinese woman says Chinese authorities in Xinjiang forced her to undergo an abortion. Government minders were assigned to monitor her at home. Finally, she left China for Kazakhstan.

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Uighur security personnel patrol near the Id Kah Mosque in Kashgar, a city in northwestern China's Xinjiang region, in 2017. Xinjiang authorities have detained members of the Uighur ethnic minority, who are largely Muslim, and held them in camps the autho

Ex-Detainee Describes Torture In China's Xinjiang Re-Education Camp

12:50pm November 13, 2018

by Rob Schmitz

"They made me wear what they called 'iron clothes,'" the man tells NPR, describing a 50-pound metal suit he was forced to wear for 12 hours. When he returned home, people were afraid to speak to him.

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Kalida Akytkhan, pictured with her son Parkhat Rakhymbergen, has two sons and two daughter-in-laws who have been detained in re-education camps in Xinjiang. She brought photos of her family to the offices of rights organization Atazhurt in Almaty.

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Families Of The Disappeared: A Search For Loved Ones Held In China's Xinjiang Region

11:11am November 12, 2018

by Rob Schmitz

A Kazakh rights organization has collected more than 1,000 testimonies from ethnic Kazakhs and Uighurs whose families have disappeared into a network of internment camps in Xinjiang.

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Monitoring stations similar to this one in Germany detected unusual radioactive material over Europe last month.

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Mysterious Radioactive Cloud Over Europe Hints At Accident Farther East

2:42pm November 10, 2017

by Geoff Brumfiel

Ruthenium-106, an artificial isotope, was detected in early October and is now gone. European safety officials say it poses no health risk to residents and that it might have come from Russia.

A Russian resupply rocket launched Thursday morning from Kazakhstan. The flight initially went as planned, but the rocket broke up in the atmosphere about six minutes after it took off.

Russian Supply Rocket Breaks Apart En Route To Space Station

5:59pm December 01, 2016

by Rebecca Hersher

The unmanned rocket stopped transmitting data about six minutes after it took off from Kazakhstan and never made it to space. This is the third botched launch of a Russian spacecraft in two years.