.jpg "From Jeltoqsan to Janaozen")
Last Friday 13 people lost their lives during the mass disturbance in the Khazakh city of Janaozen. Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev issued a state of emergency law, putting in place a curfew till January 5 and abolishing mass gatherings and rallies. The law also puts restrictions on photo- and video shooting and using copiers.
Experts say that the aggressive actions of disappointed oil industry workers were ‘inspired’ by provocateurs. The employees of the ‘Ozenmunaygaz’ company, as well as their fired colleagues, gathered on the town’s central square on the Day of Kazakhstan’s independence (December 16) to once again remind the company’s management of their demands and to support their striking colleagues. The very date made some journalists compare the events to those of 25 years ago. On 16th December 1986 the long-serving First Secretary of the Communist Party of Kazakhstan, Dinmukhamed Kunayev, was dismissed and an outsider, Gennady Kolbin, was awarded the position. This was the primary reason for the peaceful student demonstrations that started in the early morning of 17 December in a number of Kazakh cities. The protesters demanded that a native Kazakh be allowed to head Kazakhstan’s Party organization. The events were called ‘Jeltoqsan’ – ‘December’ in Kazakh.
It is obvious the Jeltoqsan events had a distinct nationalist flaovour, while the Janaozen rally had no nationalistic implications whatsoever: despite some allegations in the media, the demands were purely economic. The present unrest is rooted in an unresolved labor conflict, and it can’t just be explained by provocateurs’ activity. However, the fact that the crowd became violent and was armed with cold weapons (and after the first skirmishes with the police protestors acquired firearms) is mostly due to provocations.
The Western media still pushes the line of ‘autocratic cruelties’ in Kazakhstan, while in fact the police actions were highly professional and adequate. According to Kazakh officials, Janaozen oppositionists are being financed by the US and EU and they are feeding misinformation to the town’s residents. It is true that the ‘Democracy in Eurasia’ opposition forum, organized by the UK Foreign Policy Centre in cooperation with the non-governmental organization International Freedom Network, was described by some attendees as strikingly contracted. The recent developments of the ‘Arab spring’ also make it hard to abstract away from suspicions of western influence in the Kazakh events.
Nevertheless, the actual situation with the oil industry workers’ demands to the ‘Ozenmunaygaz’ company also raises a number of interesting questions: Why wasn’t the labor conflict resolved in all these years? What were the actual circumstances that led the police to use firearms? Who’s responsible for the presence of children in the gathering place of an angry crowd?
There is no reason to doubt that the police will keep observing all civil rights while restoring the order in the town, or that the authorities will be able to retain control over the situation. However, it seems that these events will serve as a good lesson for the Kazakh authorities, as well as for the rulers of other Post-Soviet republics: the Janaozen events demonstrate how any minor disturbance can burst into flames in the conditions of total globalization of information space.
By Yekaterina Tesemnikova and Alexei Vlasov, exclusively to VK
