Kazakhstan\u2019s president, Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, who at the height of unrest last week said he had ordered troops to shoot to kill without warning, has spent this week taking a softer line and promising genuine reform.<\/p>\n
However, with thousands of people still in detention and a behind-the-scenes power struggle still not fully resolved, many have expressed scepticism.<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople who have carried out serious crimes will be punished in accordance with the law,\u201d Tokayev wrote on Twitter on Friday. \u201cFor others, I order the prosecutor to determine their level of guilt, and if there are no aggravating circumstances, to soften their punishment.\u201d<\/p>\n
More than 10,000 people have been detained during the past two weeks. At the height of the protests, Tokayev said \u201c20,000 terrorists\u201d had attacked Kazakhstan\u2019s largest city, Almaty, but these numbers seem to have been quietly revised.<\/p>\n
On Thursday, the prosecutor\u2019s office said 494 criminal cases had been opened, including 44 for terrorism. Most of those detained instead faced administrative charges with a maximum of 15 days in jail.<\/p>\n
Journalists and rights activists say there is little transparency about the criminal charges and still no reliable figure for the number of people who died in the violence. An earlier figure of 164, published by a government-linked source, was later retracted.<\/p>\n
Even in the west of the country, where the protests began over a sharp increase in fuel prices, and where events remained largely peaceful, police rounded up hundreds of people involved in the demonstrations.<\/p>\n
Max Bokay, a longstanding rights activist in the western city of Atyrau, said by telephone that about 500 people had been detained in the region, often by police who came to their homes after Tokayev implemented a state of emergency last week. He only knew of one case where criminal charges had been launched, but said people detained on administrative charges had spoken of intimidation and beatings.<\/p>\n
Bokay, who was arrested at a 2016 protest and spent five years in jail before being released last year, said this time he had not been detained, although he had been \u201croughed up\u201d by a group of men on the street during the days of protest. \u201cAnd just today, a few hours ago, there were people kicking my apartment door, probably because today I had a one-person protest against torture in jails, I guess it\u2019s an intimidation tactic,\u201d he said on Friday.<\/p>\n
The protests, over economic and political demands, were apparently hijacked by an intra-elite battle between Tokayev and figures close to Nursultan Nazarbayev, the country\u2019s president from its founding in 1991 until 2019, when he handpicked Tokayev as his successor.<\/p>\n
Karim Masimov, head of the KNB security services and a former prime minister under Nazarbayev, has been arrested on treason charges and accused of trying to seize power, along with two of his deputies. He has not been seen or heard from since the protests began.<\/p>\n
Yermukhamet Yertysbayev, a former minister and Nazarbayev adviser, blamed \u201creactionary and conservative forces from the Nazarbayev clan\u201d for stoking the unrest. \u201cI think negotiations are ongoing, and there is a search for a compromise,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
At the height of the protests, when Tokayev\u2019s grip on Kazakhstan appeared shaky, he called on a Russia-led military alliance, the Collective Security Treaty Organisation, to intervene. More than 2,000 mostly Russian troops arrived, which helped shore up Tokayev\u2019s position, and have already begun their departure.<\/p>\n
Observers say the mission, while brief, has put Tokayev in Vladimir Putin\u2019s debt and placed Kazakhstan more firmly in Moscow\u2019s orbit. Putin has described the unrest as a \u201ccoloured revolution\u201d backed by nefarious forces in the west, leading many people to fear a crackdown on what remains of Kazakh civil society.<\/p>\n
Echoing Putin, Tokayev accused the independent media of helping fan the protests.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe were very disappointed to hear those words,\u201d said Vyacheslav Abramov, the editor-in-chief of the news portal Vlast.kz. \u201cIt\u2019s very clear that it\u2019s not media, it\u2019s not civil society, who are responsible for the crisis \u2013 it\u2019s the people in power.\u201d<\/p>\n
So far, Tokayev has not acted against media outlets, and has announced a series of measures aimed at winning popular support, including setting up a new fund for public good to which oligarchs and wealthy businessman will be forced to contribute.<\/p>\n
Abramov said there were now three possible scenarios: \u201cThe first is that we have a massive crackdown, like in Belarus; the second is that we go back to where we were before the crisis; and the third one we are going towards real reforms.\u201d The third option seemed the least likely, he added.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Kazakhstan\u2019s president, Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, who at the height of unrest last week said he had ordered troops to shoot to kill without warning, has spent this week taking a softer line and promising genuine reform. However, with thousands of people still in detention and a behind-the-scenes power struggle still not fully resolved, many have expressed […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":238956,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[2633,1226,3023,3022],"class_list":{"0":"post-238950","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world","8":"tag-kazakhstan","9":"tag-promise","10":"tag-reform","11":"tag-scepticism"},"yoast_head":"\n