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Comment by underscore_ku | Hacker News Reader

"Almost as many security forces have died as protesters according to this" source?

The article mentions it "The interior ministry says 26 "armed criminals" and 18 security officers have been killed so far in the unrest. "

i mean, real independent sources.

Define "real independent sources".

The local sources in social media all were mentioning protester fatality numbers in hundreds. They are definitely not reliable, however, I would consider the official numbers reported by KZ government - which BBC is quoting - as even less trustworthy than random social media posts.

Until we have better data I think that it is entirely appropriate to treat all current data from KZ government as intentionally falsified and either apply a reasonable multiplier (historically from other similar cases, a 10x multiplier seems appropriate; certainly that would be a better estimate than accepting their reports at face value, in similar earlier situations the reports always have been intentionally adjusted) or treat the local estimates as the best estimates currently available.

Are you for real? FFS...

Read the article, it's in there.

are you? real source not government propaganda.

Considering the article is trying to make the KZ government look bad, I'd say the part that appears less biased is relevant.

The whole point of HN is to comment on the article. BBC is obviously UK government propaganda, so the fact their headline is clickbait and the little data they do include doesn't support it is relevant.

Why should the UK-propaganda even have a stance on Kazakhstan? This sound like the usual russian troll approach of "Everyone does everything, so bad is relative" fog grenade.

Russia seems to be pretty run-down lately in the east. Especially with Chinese investments basically buying out the usual province robber barons and slowly replacing the owner-caste.

Kazakhstan's current government is a Russian ally. You surely have seen all the western hostility towards Russia in the news lately, right?

Do you have any basis for the claim that "Kazakhstan's current government is a Russian ally."? President Tokayev seems to mostly continue the course of carefully balancing Kazakhstans national independence with all their foreign relations, so one could as well claim that Kazakhstan current government a chinese ally or a european ally, given that they are not at war with either and those are the three largest trade partners of Kazakhstans. In order of export trade volume: EU, China, Russia and for import trade volume Russia, China, EU. Note that Kazhakstan exports five times more than it imports. (Source: oec.world and comtrade.un.org)

The Kazakh president literally asked Russia to send in troops... Pretty sure that qualifies. They're in trade and defense pacts with Russia.

I see how my comment was badly worded and misunderstandable, my point is to refute the strong undertone that a nation can only ever be allied with one side of a cold war bloc as outdated, overly simplistic and completely missing the actual reality of politics and economics in the region.

The data is included because there not much verifiable source to come by. Think about your logic -- BBC is UK propaganda who wants to make Kazakhstan look bad, yet they cited government's number and quoted the president, not anyone from the protesters? The government is a party of the conflict, yet you consider their reported number believable?

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