Kazakhstan president gives shoot to kill order to ‘destroy’ protesters
- President said ‘bandits and terrorists … criminals and murderers’ must be pursued to the end; dismissed calls to hold talks with protesters as ‘stupidity’
- ‘The militants have not laid down their arms, they continue to commit crimes or are preparing for them ...Whoever does not surrender will be destroyed,’ Tokayev said
Kazakhstan’s President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev said on Friday he had given shoot-to-kill orders to deal with further disturbances from those he called bandits and terrorists, adding that those who failed to surrender would be “destroyed.”
Up to 20,000 “bandits” had attacked the biggest city Almaty and had been destroying state property, Tokayev said in a televised address after a week when protests over fuel prices exploded into a countrywide wave of unrest.
He said as part of the “counterterrorist” operation, he had ordered law enforcement agencies and the army “to shoot to kill without warning.”
“The militants have not laid down their arms, they continue to commit crimes or are preparing for them. The fight against them must be pursued to the end. Whoever does not surrender will be destroyed,” Tokayev said on state television.
He dismissed calls to hold talks with protesters.
“What stupidity. What kind of talks can we hold with criminals and murderers?” he said.
“We had to deal with armed and well-prepared bandits, local as well as foreign. More precisely, with terrorists. So we have to destroy them, this will be done soon”.