article_snippet.sent: Kazakhstan has been criticised by the West and human rights bodies for crackdowns on dissent.
article_snippet.sent: The multi-ethnic, mainly Muslim country is stable in a region troubled by ethnic violence from Kyrgyzstan to Afghanistan.
article_snippet.sent: But the second-largest economy in the former Soviet Union has been hurt in the past year by the decline in global energy prices and by economic difficulty in neighbouring Russia, hit by Western sanctions over Ukraine.
article_snippet.sent: Kazakh economic growth is forecast to slow to 1.5 percent the past year from a 4.3 percent rise in 2014.
article_snippet.sent: Gross domestic product may actually shrink if oil prices drop to below $50 per barrel, Kazakh officials have said.