Kazakhstan: trailing protesters

Nearly 8,000 people were arrested after the riots that shake the country, while the number of victims remains uncertain. The relationship turns out with the neighboring Kyrgyzstan after the diffusion of a video showing the tumped face of one of its known musicians arrested.

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The Kazakhe authorities pose a lead screed on the information and multiply the contradictory statements after the riots repressed in the blood that have occurred in recent days in this country of Central Asia. A TELEGRAM channel controlled by the Ministry of Information published, Sunday, January 9, a first assessment, no doubt provisional, of 164 civilians killed, of which 103 in Almaty. The larger city of the country, it still resonated all weekends with firearms with, nevertheless, a decreasing intensity. Only the figure of eighteen dead among the members of the security forces had officially circulated so far. Later, during the day Sunday, the Minister of Health, however, refuted this first assessment that he had himself provided, speaking “of error”. Without more detail.

Saturday, a journalist from the Russian Independent Television Chain Dojd claimed to have been targeted by gunshots, while moving armed men pulling all those who were trying to approach a morgue from Almaty. The President, Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, himself has publicly called the police to be drawn without summation on the “terrorists entrained abroad”, before denouncing, Monday, “a coup attempt” And to ensure that his “strengths would never shoot on peaceful protesters”. A few hours earlier, the police announced, in a statement, the arrest of “7,939 individuals held by the [ministry] organs”.

The Kazakh power weaves a link between the violence and the former boss of Karim Massimov security services, stopped on Thursday for “high treason”. “The Tokayev clan tries to make the hat for the protest wave,” says Temur Umarov, specialist in Central Asia at the Carnegie de Moscow Center. Uygoure ethnicity, Mr. Massimov was so far a heavy weight of Kazakh politics, considered absolutely loyal to former Nursultan President Nazarbayev.

Violence Foyer

There is no doubt that the peaceful protesters of the protest that began on January 2 have been quickly overflowed by more or less organized bands sowing chaos in a dozen cities of the country. But who are these rioters and pillards? The question still divides observers in a context where the circulation of information is considerably bridle by the authorities. The Internet has remained several days off, just like mobile or fixed communications, especially in this focus of violence that has become Almaty. On Monday, the authorities announced the recovery of the Internet in the city still identified by the control posts held by the army and the police. Several Kazakh journalists and bloggers who have covered events have been arrested in recent hours and immediately brought to court.

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/Media reports.