Protests in Kazakhstan against Independence Day

National democratic movements say the date should not be celebrated: instead the victims of the mass demonstrations in 1986 and 2011 should be commemorated. The authorities react with arrests and violence.  Demonstrators want a true parliamentary republic and call for real removal of Nazarbaev from public life.

Astana (AsiaNews) - Opposition movements in Kazakhstan yesterday organized unauthorized protest demonstrations in some cities across the country, which also led to arrests and riots.  The organizers of the protests are the ex-banker and leader of the opposition of the regime Mukhtar Ablyazov, founder of the "Democratic Choice of Kazakhstan" group (forbidden by the government), and the leaders of the "Oyan, Qazaqstan" movement.  In the capital Nur-Sultan, the police interrupted a march that was heading towards the government headquarters, arresting dozens of protesters.

The 16th was the country's Independence Day party, a date that coincides with the mass demonstrations in Alma-Ata 33 years ago (1986), when the Kazakh youth rebelled against the appointment of a puppet of the Soviet leader of Kazakhstan, Gennady Kolbin.  But even the eight years since the events of the city of Zhanaozene in the Mangistau region, where in 2011 the authorities violently stifled a strike by oil well workers, causing the death of 17 people, protesters believe that December 16 should not be a day of celebration, but of national memory and mourning.

In Nur-Sultan, near the monument to the victims of the famine of 1932-33, the participants of the gathering recalled the victims of 1986 and 2011. Many expressed their indignation at the current social and economic course of the nation, which has failed to protect the weakest sections of the population;  others have called for the release of political prisoners.  "The real culprits have never been punished," said one survivor of the protests that took place in the city of Tselinograd, later renamed Akmola, then Astana and this year Nur-Sultan, in honor of the "eternal president" Nazarbaev, who in fact continues to control the country even after resigning as president.

In Almaty, near the independence monument in Piazza della Repubblica, an unauthorized procession of the "Oyan, Qazaqstan" movement took place.  Dozens of young people held banners, with slogans such as "Make way for young people".  Ayna Samatova, a member of the group, declared that she had come to honor the memory of the victims of past violence, taking inspiration from them to obtain the reforms expected by many, to make Kazakhstan a parliamentary, and non-presidential and "autocratic" republic  , with the actual withdrawal of Nazarbaev from politics.

In the same square in Almaty, the members of the "Democratic Party of Kazakhstan" laid flowers at the foot of the monument, asking them not to hand over two inmates of Kazakh ethnicity, Kaster Musakhanuly and Murager Alimuly, to the Chinese.  Some activists were also stopped by the police.  Also in the city of Shikment a local citizen, Zhaksylyk Kairov, was arrested as he approached the place where flowers were laid in front of the memorial to Kayrat Ryskulbekov, a participant in the 1986 protests.

Police arrested Murat Dzhimbaev in Karaganda, who was posting a protest sign;  in Almaty also Rashid Khabibulla, brother of the poet and dissident Aron Atabek, was arrested, who since 2006 has been serving an 18-year prison sentence for the so-called "Shaniraksk affair": a clash with the police who were demolishing illegal buildings erected  by some artists in protest.  A journalist, Lukpan Akhmedyarov, was arrested in Uralsk and taken to the police district "to be questioned about the protests".