[ad_1]
One 12 months in the past, state media largely ignored the largest outbreak of civil unrest in Kazakhstan’s historical past. The job of informing the general public objectively in regards to the widespread protests fell on impartial reporters and some so-called citizen journalists and bloggers who did their jobs at nice private threat. These journalists had been attacked by protesters, assailed and tear-gassed by police, shot with rubber bullets, detained, and in some instances arrested, crushed, and imprisoned.
When the air, so just lately stuffed with smoke from grenades and bullets, each rubber and actual, cleared, reporters had been those urgent the federal government for a full accounting of the 238 individuals killed, greater than 4,500 injured, round 10,000 detained, and a number of other hundred reportedly tortured.
That is the story of the Qandy Qantar — “Bloody January” — rebellion by way of the eyes of those that lined it, starting in Zhanaozen and ending in Almaty.
You’ll be able to learn this sequence in English at The Diplomat and in Russian and Kazakh at Orda.kz.
UST-KAMENOGORSK, Kazakhstan: Daryn Nursapar had been a part of the Kazakh authorities’s propaganda machine for 17 years and had risen to chief editor at Altaynews.kz, a state media outlet. However in early January 2022, when the federal government ordered Daryn and his colleagues to not cowl or point out on social media an upcoming protest, one thing within him snapped.
“I felt ashamed that I couldn’t inform our readers what was occurring,” Daryn mentioned. “I felt as a journalist I needed to cowl it.”
Though his bosses on the web site warned him to not go, on January 5, Daryn placed on his press jacket and went to the central sq. the place police say greater than 3,000 protesters had been gathering.
“I didn’t suppose there can be so many individuals, and I believed carrying the press jacket would defend me,” he mentioned. He posted a number of photographs and movies to his private Fb web page, the place he has almost 5,000 associates.
“I felt I had the proper to publish no matter I needed on my private Fb web page,” he mentioned.
However even on Fb, Daryn rigorously curated what he shared. His movies confirmed individuals holding up a big Kazakhstan flag and somebody studying calls for right into a bullhorn. Different photos confirmed a sea of individuals standing peacefully as a light-weight snow started to fall.
An area activist speaks to the gang in Ust-Kamenogorsk on January 5, 2022. Picture credit score: Vitaliy Ivanov
Whereas the protest in Ust-Kamenogorsk began out peaceable, the pictures and movies posted by impartial blogger Alexandra Osipova, 30, confirmed the way it progressed into what she calls a “bloodbath.”
“The police started to encompass the protesters after which they in flip started to react,” mentioned Alexandra who livestreamed and filmed the protest on her Instagram account, sandra_ouz, which has greater than 46,200 followers.
“Police had been the primary to assault by throwing tear gasoline at individuals. Then the protesters took sticks, stones, any means at hand, and attacked the police,” she mentioned. “They used Molotov cocktails. They threw stones on the administration constructing, smashed home windows, reduce down bushes. Police responded with rubber bullets and extra tear gasoline.”
Police collect close to the brightly lit vacation tree in Ust-Kamenogorsk. Picture credit score: Alexandra Osipova
In her movies, the capturing at first feels like fireworks amid a festive setting with a giant vacation tree adorned in sparkly gold and inexperienced lights. Then the rounds turn out to be extra staccato and fixed, and the scene rapidly shifts into one thing extra akin to conflict: The air is filled with smoke. Individuals are screaming and working for canopy.
Then at about 6 p.m. the web was abruptly shut off, she mentioned.
Alexandra isn’t a skilled journalist. She usually makes use of her Instagram account to advertise shops and merchandise. However between movies of Alexandra getting makeovers and beauty therapies, there are severe video reviews of individuals complaining about authorities deficiencies.
As one of many few bloggers on the protest, Alexandra acknowledged that she had an obligation to suppose and act like a journalist even when she couldn’t instantly publish what she gathered. She collected movies from individuals taken from balconies that confirmed police punching and kicking individuals, then dragging them throughout the icy asphalt. She interviewed witnesses on digicam with the hope of posting when the web got here again on.
One man she filmed outdoors the hospital mentioned he was near the frontlines. “They fired rubber bullets and stun grenades,” the person mentioned as she filmed together with her telephone. “Then the tanks went in. Vehicles began to burn. Then they fired reside ammunition. I noticed a younger man fall and I picked him up. There was one other man with a automobile, and we dragged the wounded man into the automobile. Then they began capturing at our automobile with reside ammunition. They started to open fireplace on everybody, on all of the automobiles.” The person factors to what seems like a big bullet gap in a automobile door.
Different movies present 1000’s of individuals marching down the road into the early morning, shouting in unison defiantly.
Battles between police and protesters lasted till 2 a.m., Alexandra mentioned. Anybody on the sq. later than that was captured by police.
“They piled them close to the Christmas tree within the sq.,” she mentioned. “There individuals lay face down within the snow and waited for the police bus to return for them. Out on the road, police pressured them to face dealing with the wall for a very long time. They had been additionally taken to the fitness center the place they had been folded face down on the ground.”
Police had been stopping and arresting anybody close to the protest. Alexandra additionally fell into their internet. After she left the hospital, she was in her automobile at a visitors mild when police, in riot gear and helmets, surrounded her automobile. A video taken from a close-by constructing reveals police dragging Alexandra from her automobile and onto the road on her knees.
“Please, don’t kill me. Don’t kill me,” she mentioned she cried.
Once they demanded her telephone, her journalistic instincts kicked in and he or she demanded to know underneath what authorized protocol may they seize her telephone. Police made a present of waving their weapons and cursed at her however launched her.
Prosecutor of Ust-Kamenogorsk Yerlan Bulanbaev speaks to the gang in early January 2022. Picture credit score: Vitaliy Ivanov
Kokshetau
In the meantime, 760 miles away in Kokshetau, in northern Kazakhstan, it was barely 9 a.m. on January 6 and the town sq. was almost full. Tons of of younger individuals, together with youngsters from close by villages, gathered close to the bronze statue of Abylai Khan. Watching them had been about 200 policemen carrying masks and helmets, and armed with batons.
Baqyt Smagul, 57, the editor of the native impartial paper, Bukpa, stood aside from the protesters. He advised police he was a journalist. He by no means wears a press jacket as a result of he says all of the police within the metropolis know who he’s. That day, he mentioned, they weren’t taking note of him.
At 10 a.m. police began closing in on the protesters.
“Police had been capturing three or 4 individuals from the gang with none purpose to take action and began to beat them in entrance of everybody,” Baqyt mentioned.
Baqyt shouted at individuals to not combat again, warning that they might face felony costs.
Police pressured individuals onto ready police buses. Some managed to run away whereas others walked peacefully onto the buses. It took at the very least three buses to haul away those that had been caught.
Within the chaos, police captured Baqyt, too, and compelled him right into a police automobile. He requested them why they had been arresting him since he was a journalist. They didn’t reply.
On the police station, officers tried to get him to signal a paper that mentioned he wasn’t working as a journalist. Baqyt refused. After being held all day, he had a listening to. It lasted 5 minutes. He was sentenced to 5 days in administrative jail for collaborating in an unauthorized rally.
The jail cell, which housed six prisoners, was chilly. They slept of their garments and coats. All they’d for a bathroom was a bucket.
A Knock on the Door
On January 7, Daryn was having dinner along with his spouse and 4 children at their dwelling in Ust-Kamenogorsk when the police arrived.
“After I heard the knock on the door, I knew they’d come for me,” Daryn mentioned. However he mentioned his household “was shocked.”
4 officers got here into the home. The seized his telephone and commenced trying by way of his photographs. “So, you had been there,” one officer mentioned.
They advised Daryn he had come to their consideration after they acknowledged his face on protest footage.
Daryn mentioned he was on the protest as a journalist.
“However you weren’t carrying a press jacket,” one of many officers mentioned.
Daryn Nursapar was chief editor at Altaynews.kz, a state media outlet, when violence broke out in early January 2022. Picture credit score: Cheryl L. Reed.
Though Daryn had donned his press jacket when he initially arrived to report on the protest on January 5, protesters turn out to be aggressive towards him and he lined it along with his common coat.
When the police took Daryn to the station two days later, he put his press jacket on. He hoped he may clarify, with the jacket reinforcing his place as a journalist, they usually’d let him go.
“Sporting the press jacket was a mistake,” Daryn mentioned. “Realizing what I do know now, I’d nonetheless go to the protest, however I’d put on a masks and be extra secretive about my presence.”
On the police station, officers extra totally examined Daryn’s photographs and searched by way of his messenger apps to see if he had tried to draw individuals to the protest, which he mentioned he hadn’t.
“The police threatened me, ‘You had been the organizer of the riots. You will be sentenced to jail for a very long time.’ ”
Daryn, charged with being a participant in an unauthorized protest, was sentenced to fifteen days. The sentence was later lowered to 10 days. He served his time in Ayagoz, about 190 miles away, with 4 different individuals who went to the protest in Ust-Kamenogorsk.
Whereas in jail he considered what he’d performed. “I felt I had fulfilled an obligation. I did the proper factor.”
When he returned dwelling, he realized his oldest little one, a 10-year-old boy, was confronted by one other boy who advised him “your father is a terrorist and is in jail.” Daryn’s spouse had advised the youngsters their father was on a enterprise journey.
“I defined to my son that what I used to be doing was not against the law. I used to be doing journalism.”
By January 9, Alexandra had heard of Daryn’s arrest in addition to different accounts of individuals being tortured throughout interrogations. She mentioned she sensed police had been coming for her, too. She dropped her children off at her mother’s home and erased photographs that she felt may be construed as incriminating from her telephone.
At 6 p.m., a policeman carrying civilian garments and a navy man carrying a balaclava appeared at her door. With Alexandra carrying solely her pajamas — sweatpants and a hoodie — they drove her to what appeared like a navy base, the place she was handed off to 4 uniformed law enforcement officials. The policeman in civilian garments departed. The navy man stayed.
Alexandra was then escorted into what she described as a Soviet-style youngsters’s classroom with outdated wood desks. She requested for an legal professional, however they advised her underneath the nationwide state of emergency, which President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev had declared on January 5, they didn’t have to offer her entry to at least one.
Alexandra Osipova, 30, is an impartial blogger. Picture credit score: Cheryl L. Reed
Every of the 5 males took turns interrogating her. They confirmed her surveillance footage of the protest and requested her to determine herself.
“The navy man began shouting and cursing and calling me a terrorist. He was blaming me for his colleagues being injured.”
Frightened, she mentioned she stared at a wall reasonably than face her interrogators. The boys didn’t like that. In response, the lads stood in a circle round her as she remained seated in a chair. Their belts had been stage together with her face. “It was humiliating,” she mentioned. “It was a method of psychological stress.”
She requested them: “Are you going to beat me?”
The navy man replied: “We wouldn’t soiled our palms with you.”
A legislation enforcement good friend arrived and suggested her to comply with an administrative wonderful. She did, pondering it could be the equal of a parking ticket. The police instantly relaxed and their harsh tone softened. They even let her nap whereas they waited for a decide. When the decide appeared round 11 p.m., they organized the youngsters’s desks right into a makeshift courtroom, with a secretary taking notes close to the decide.
The police claimed that in a livestreamed video Alexandra had inspired individuals to return to the sq.. She mentioned there was no such video on her Instagram feed, which she may show it in the event that they would offer entry to her telephone and if the web wasn’t turned off. Police insisted that a number of instances they advised her to cease filming. If that had been the case, she argued, that alternate can be on movie, and it wasn’t.
She was charged with organizing an unlawful protest. She would have spent 15 days in jail, however the decide took pity on her as a result of she has two young children. She was fined 153,150 tenge, about $322.
When the web was restored after six days of blackout, individuals flooded their social media accounts with photographs and movies of police beatings and of family who disappeared into police custody.
“After I discovered what was occurring all through the nation, I noticed how fortunate I used to be, because of being a girl and a public determine. It may have been a lot worse for me,” she mentioned.
Three days after Alexandra’s launch, police introduced that three individuals had been killed “because of the riots” in Ust-Kamenogorsk. Police didn’t present any additional particulars. An Azattyq journalist, nonetheless, discovered the households of the three males who had been killed within the metropolis and advised their tales.
Kuanysh Kabylkanov, 25, a employee at a titanium and magnesium plant, died from a single gunshot to the chest. He was married with a 1-year-old daughter. Zholzharykh Yesenzholuly, 26, labored in a bakery in a close-by village, was additionally shot in in chest. He was married with an toddler little one. Aidos Aldashov, 30, had been on the rally for lower than an hour when he was shot within the again. He left behind a spouse and two youngsters, ages 7 and 10.
Nationwide Day of Mourning
On January 10, Tokayev requested the nation to grieve for victims of the protest. He referred to as the protest a coup d’etat try and blamed Islamic radicals from Afghanistan and the Center East.
Nurzhan Baimuldin, 51, editor of the Kokshetau-Asia Information Company, was dwelling when the nation noticed the Nationwide Day of Mourning. He was watching a tv broadcast of Tokayev in a gathering with the international locations of the Collective Safety Treaty Group (CSTO), the NATO-like group that had despatched peacekeeping troops to Kazakhstan to assist curb the unrest. Round 2,500 CSTO troops — largely Russian — deployed to Kazakhstan after a January 5 request from Tokayev for help. They guarded authorities buildings and infrastructure, fired no bullets, and left inside two weeks.
Nurzhan believed Tokayev confirmed uncommon deference to Russian President Vladimir Putin and requested on Fb if Tokayev took orders from Putin. In publish after publish Nurzhan demanded to know who was actually working his nation.
Baqyt Smagul, 57, the editor of the native impartial paper, Bukpa, stands with Nurzhan Baimuldin, 51, editor of the Kokshetau-Asia Information Company. Picture credit score: Cheryl L. Reed
On January 12, Nurzhan obtained a telephone name from an individual who offered himself as a high-ranking police officer. The person mentioned he wanted to fulfill with Nurzhan as a result of the police division wanted his recommendation. Nurzhan mentioned he was stunned by the decision. On the similar time, he understood one thing was incorrect.
By now, Nurzhan had realized about Baqyt’s arrest, and he knew he may very well be in peril as properly. The entire nation was shut down. The web had returned however was spotty nonetheless. There was nothing else for Nurzhan to do however go and see what the police needed. When he arrived on the police division, although, he had a nasty feeling. Nearly instantly police began to stress him about his Fb posts.
“They stored asking me why I wrote such dangerous inquiries to Tokayev and why I requested questions in regards to the Russian troops coming to Kazakhstan, and why I requested questions on Putin.” They confirmed him printouts of his Fb posts.
“It’s my constitutional proper to precise my opinion,” he mentioned he advised them. “They needed me to admit that I used to be organizing protests although these posts had been made after the protests had been over.”
He was taken to the workplace of the police investigator and knowledgeable that police had opened a felony case towards him primarily based on his Fb posts. “They mentioned that I used to be concerned within the course of of making destabilization in the neighborhood. I used to be calling individuals collectively for the protests. I used to be saying offensive issues in regards to the president.”
Realizing he was being accused of great allegations, he used his proper to not reply questions and demanded an legal professional.
Police urged he use their legal professional, and he laughed.
Nurzhan’s legal professional was tied up with one other case and he needed to wait a number of hours. When she arrived, Nurzhan’s legal professional requested that they transfer the listening to to a different day as a result of Nurzhan had a excessive physique temperature and there was an opportunity he was contaminated with COVID-19.
Police referred to as for an ambulance and a paramedic gave him drugs to decrease his fever, however they refused to delay the listening to.
At 9 p.m. Nurzhan was introduced earlier than a decide. The decide sentenced him to 10 days of detention. However not like Baqyt, who’d been in a position to serve his time at an administrative detention middle, Nurzhan was taken to a felony jail.
The prisoners there have been held for all kinds of great convictions, from pedophilia to assault and homicide. Nurzhan mentioned he shared a cell with a person who broke his spouse’s arm, a person who hit a girl and her children along with his automobile, and one other who had attacked his neighbor.
“There was one rest room within the room, which was being utilized by six prisoners,” he mentioned. “The water was rusty and smelled foul. The cell was so chilly. There was snow and ice on the blankets from a window. I noticed I needed to assist myself morally as a result of no person goes to rescue me.”
What he didn’t know was that his colleagues had appealed to the final prosecutor and requested why an individual can be imprisoned for asking questions of the president.
On the fifth day of his sentence, Nurzhan was referred to as from his cell and advised to convey all his garments with him. He was dropped at the prosecutor’s workplace on the jail. The prosecutor advised him he was sorry for the case and the best way it was dealt with. The prosecutor was accepting an attraction to Nurzhan’s case that would cut back his sentence to 5 days. He was launched.
Nurzhan and Baqyt each appealed their instances to the regional court docket, which declined to listen to them. Nurzhan then appealed to the Supreme Court docket of Kazakhstan, nevertheless it additionally refused to listen to his case.
Alexandra appealed her wonderful. It was lowered to 90,000 tenge, about $185. She paid it.
4 days earlier than our interview, Daryn give up his job at Altaynews.kz. He’s now working within the vacationer trade, however nonetheless posts on Fb.
***
Tomorrow, January 6, we’ll comply with the story of Kazakhstan’s Bloody January to Taraz and Shymkent.
[ad_2]
Source link
