(source: http://campaignkazakhstan.org/?p=168)
Here we carry an article by Yulia Ponomareva published in The Moscow News on 22 December about the extreme state violence and repression begun on 16 December by the Nazarbayev regime and the aftermath. The thoroughly anti democratic ‘state of emergency’ in Zhanaozen, declared by Nazarbayev in the wake of the events in December, was yesterday extended by 20 days. This comes in advance of snap parliamentary elections to be held on 15 January. You can read a fuller article on these latest developments published yesterday in The Irish Times newspaper here – CampaignKazakhstan
Kazakh opposition leaders are calling for an end to state violence and an independent commission to investigate the brutal crackdown in the Caspian oil town of Zhanaozen, where security forces have shot dead dozens of protesters.
The town of Zhanaozen in western Kazakhstan has been cut off from the rest of the world since last Friday, when riot police and the military started shooting striking oil workers.
“The first six bodies were buried yesterday, while 60 families held prayer services for their dead relatives, even though the bodies still haven’t been handed over to them,” Ainur Kurmanov, a co-chair of the Socialist Movement of Kazakhstan, told a news conference in Moscow on Wednesday. “They know for sure they are dead.”
Kazakh trade unions and socialist organizations report at least 70 people killed and over 100 missing, citing their members in the region. Authorities have put the death toll at 16.
‘Fascist methods’
Yesenbek Ukteshbayev, a leader of the Zhanartu trade union, told the press conference of a doctor in a local hospital, who herself “closed the eyes of 23 [dead] people.”
Over 300 have been arrested, according to the trade unions. Some say they saw their friends taken away or killed, but their names are missing from official records of those dead and injured.
“Screams and groans are repeatedly heard from the local detention center,” Kurmanov said. “Yesterday they were seen taking out several rolled carpets from there. In the Muslim tradition, bodies are rolled in carpets.”
According to Ukteshbayev, relatives of those kept in the detention center say they were driven out into the freezing yard naked and doused with cold water from hoses.
“Only the fascists used such methods,” said Ukteshbayev.
In Aktau, the regional capital, Kenzhegali Suyeyev, the head of a trade union commission investigating the tragedy, said people in Zhanaozen were shocked at the violence used by state forces, and had no reaction to the government’s offer of jobs in different regions.
“Men have been beaten up and arrested… What reaction can there be when people are shot with assault rifles, and those wounded are finished off?
Even the Germans didn’t do that,” Suyeyev told The Moscow News by telephone. “People are shocked – they can’t believe they live in a democracy. These are workers, children, women that died – they were unarmed, you understand?”
Morgue evidence
A Novaya Gazeta correspondent who managed to get into Zhanaozen reported that at least 64 bodies turned up in the town’s morgue on Dec. 16-17.
Korkel, a woman who was visiting her sister in Zhanaozen and went to the local hospital to help there, told correspondent Yelena Kostyuchenko: “There was no cold water in the morgue to wash the bodies. I started to count the bodies. They were put in a pile, one on top of another.
Twenty-one bodies were brought there on the 16th. At 9pm Tamila, who works there, closed it, and I went home. But more bodies continued to be brought. By 9am on Dec. 17th another 43 were brought.”
The Kazakh service of Radio Liberty, Radio Azattyk, managed to reach several Zhanaozen residents on the phone.
“Last night my brother went to a drugstore, and police beat him up and took him away from there. They took his money and phone,” said one resident, called Gulbarshyn. “Some can’t even find their kids. Many parents are standing in front of the police station. But they won’t show them their kids. Please tell the world what we’re saying.”
Another resident, Aigul Zhalgasbayeva, told Radio Azattyk: “We can’t go outside, can’t even go to work. We eat what we have [at home]. Riot police are taking the guys somewhere. We don’t know what’s going on with them.”
Graphic video
In a disturbingly graphic video from Zhanaozen that surfaced on YouTube of the Dec. 16 events riot police can be clearly seen shooting into an unarmed crowd. Some protesters fall down wounded, while several stand up and run, and some try to crawl. One man, unable to move, is shown being beaten by several police with batons.
On Tuesday, Kazakh Prime Minister Karim Masimov said that the country’s president, Nursultan Nazarbayev, had supported an idea to re-employ workers sacked during the strike, and offer them jobs at lower pay in different regions of Kazakhstan.
“The head of state instructed the government to employ the people who were fired,” Masimov said.
First Deputy Prime Minister Umirzak Shukeyev said this offer would apply to 900 workers from Ozenmunaygas and 900 from Karazhanbasmunai.
“Those fired will be offered new jobs with the republic’s big companies, mainly in the mining and oil and gas industries, with salaries of 80 to 90 percent of what they were paid before.”
He added that the government and future employers were discussing travel expenses and accommodation for former oil workers.
But Kurmanov said people in Mangistau province would reject this proposal.
“It’s an unreal project. Reaction is negative, no one is going to relocate unless they’re forced to,” Kurmanov said.
Unions report that the entire province has been gripped by riots and strikes. Oil companies in the area have suspended operations as their workers went on strike. Rallies have been held in Aktau and neighboring towns.
“On Dec. 17 and 18 there were clashes in Shetpe, with firearms used against oil workers and locals, who blocked the railroad, set a few railroad cars on fire, and dismantled tracks,” said Kurmanov. “Currently, there are clashes going on in the village of Zhetybai.”
‘Peaceful rally’
The police have been accused of going on a rampage by the opposition
The conflict sparked in Zhanaozen, where up to 3,000 people were protesting on the town’s main square to mark seven months of a strike demanding better working conditions and higher salaries. The workers’ employer, Ozenmunaygas, a subsidiary of state-controlled oil and gas giant Kazmunaygas, and the government had both refused to hold talks with the strikers, independent unions say.
On Independence Day, Dec. 16, protesters were holding a peaceful rally to call on all oil industry workers to go on a national strike and call for Nazarbayev and his government to step down.
“I think it was the main reason for cracking down on them,” said Ukteshbayev.
The crowd was prodded into violence by a provocation: a police truck rammed into it injuring several people and was overturned and set on fire.
Then the crowd started to crash festive installations on the square, seized and burned down the town hall, as well as several other buildings in town, as the police attempted to stop it with guns.
“At least 20 people were killed during the first shooting in the morning, when the police failed to keep people down, and they broke through the police cordon, disarmed the police partly and seized the town hall and the administration of Ozenmunaygas,” said Kurmanov.
Russian journalists thanked
After 2pm all social networks were blocked in Kazakhstan and all opposition sites were down. Mobile phone connections were only restored in Mangistau province on Thursday.
“Many in Kazakhstan learnt what’s going on in their country only due to the Russian media,” said Kurmanov. He thanked Russian journalists who reported from Mangistau province. Four of them were arrested and later released.
After 3pm extra troops and armored military vehicles were deployed to Zhanaozen. Ten planes with military units landed in Aktau, after which the airport was closed. As of 3pm, 70 people were already reported dead by independent sources.
“During the second shooting, which started in the afternoon, armored military vehicles were used, and people were shot from large-caliber machine guns,” said Kurmanov.
According to Kurmanov, clashes are continuing even now.
Official and independent investigations
Nazarbayev’s government has set up an official commission to investigate the shooting, but public activists are mistrustful. “How can murderers investigate their own crime?” Ukteshbayev said.
Trade unions and socialists have set up their commission, which is collecting data to determine the death toll and find those missing. Another commission, set up by the opposition National Social Democratic Party, is working in parallel.
Paul Murphy, a Socialist member of the European Parliament from Ireland, has called for an independent commission from Europe to investigate the massacre.
A group of Russian human rights activists, including the Moscow Helsinki Group’s Lyudmila Alexeyeva and leader of the movement For Human Rights Lev Ponomaryov, have issued a letter to the Russian government demanding that it express indignation over repressions, tortures and unjustified use of armed forces in violation of the CIS Convention on Rights and Main Freedoms. They called on the Kremlin to urge the Kazakh government to start dialogue with the workers on strike.
International reaction
Human rights activists have little hope for the help of international leaders, however. “Germany, France, and other European countries will try to hold back to the last moment,” said Anatoly Baranov, editor of the online newspaper Forum.msk.ru, which has openly supported the workers’ uprising in Kazakhstan.
“Europe receives gas and oil from the region. European governments are concerned with providing their voters with [fuel] to warm their houses with and fill their gas tanks with,” said Baranov.
However, Kazakhstan may be influenced by its major partner, Russia.
“Medvedev tried to publicly distance himself from Nazarbayev at the meeting of the Collective Security Treaty Organization the other day,” said Yury Linkov, a representative of the Zhanartu union in Russia. “No one wants a local Mubarak in the CIS.”
Kurmanov said that Moscow could have sent its troops to Kazakhstan, but was probably prevented by “the rising wave of resentment in Russia itself.”
“It was the rally at Bolotnaya that stopped Moscow,” he said.
