Kazakhstan protesters ‘killed’ in clashes with police as crisis escalates

Issued on: 06/01/2022 – 07:58

Several armoured personnel carriers and dozens of troops moving on foot were seen entering the main square of Almaty early on Thursday, a day after a Russia-led security alliance offered to send peacekeeping forces to quell the unrest.

Gunshots were heard as security forces approached the crowd, according to Reuters witnesses.

Around Kazakhstan, protests triggered by a fuel price rise killed eight police and national guard troops on Tuesday and Wednesday, prompting President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev to declare a state of emergency and appeal for help from Moscow and its allies.

State television reported on Thursday that the National Bank of Kazakhstan had decided to suspend work of banks in the country for the safety of their workers. The Internet in the country is mostly down.

Kazakh president appeals for international help after protests turn deadly

Initially sparked by anger at the fuel price hike, the protests have quickly spread to take in wider opposition to Tokayev’s predecessor Nursultan Nazarbayev, who retained significant power despite quitting in 2019 after a nearly three-decade rule.

Nazarbayev, 81, has been widely seen as the main political force in Nur-Sultan, the purpose-built capital which bears his name. His family is believed to control much of the economy, the largest in Central Asia. He has not been seen or heard from since the protests began.

The Central Asian nation’s reputation for stability under Nazarbayev helped attract hundreds of billions of dollars of foreign investment in its oil and metals industries.

But a younger generation is demanding the liberalisation seen in other former satellite states of the Soviet Union. The protests are the worst in Kazakhstan – a country five times the size of France with a population of nearly 19 million people – in over a decade.

(FRANCE 24 with AFP and REUTERS)