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The Kazakh activist Serikjan Bilash on January 21, 2019 in Almaty. Ruslan PRYANIKOV / AFP

Serikjan Bilash, the Kazakh activist for the rights of Muslim and Turkic ethnic groups living in Xinjiang, was released on Friday (August 16th) in Almaty. To join his family he has not seen for 4 months, he had to sign an agreement with the authorities of the country.

With our correspondent in Almaty, Ayla Kurban

To regain his freedom, Kazakhstan's best-known activist had to promise to abandon the cause of the Kazakhs of China. They, like the other Muslim ethnic groups in Xinjiang, suffer severe repressions that go as far as confinement in re-education camps.

In March, Serikjan Bilash was arrested by the Kazakh police. Accused of inciting interethnic hatred, he was soon placed under house arrest in the capital of Noursoultan.

►To read too - Kazakhstan: trial for Serikjan Bilash, defender of Kazakhs in Xinjiang

After his surprise release on Friday, he addressed the many supporters waiting for the court verdict downstairs. He confided that this political affair had been settled thanks to the intervention of President Tokayev, because " no harm has been done to anyone, apart from the Republic of China ".

In addition to stopping his activist activity, the forty-year-old will not be able to leave the Almaty region for three months and will still have to pay a fine of 280 dollars.

All this, however, does not allow to know the future of the association Atajurt he had founded and which had given voice to the many families of inmates in Xinjiang.