Kazakh president gives shoot-to-kill order to quell protests

Thu, January 6, 2022, 9:13 PM
By Olzhas Auyezov

ALMATY (Reuters) - Security forces appeared to have reclaimed the streets of Kazakhstan's main city on Friday after days of violence, and the Russian-backed president said he had ordered his troops to shoot to kill to put down a countrywide uprising.

A day after Moscow sent paratroopers to help crush the insurrection, police were patrolling the debris-strewn streets of Almaty, although some gunfire could still be heard.

Dozens have died and public buildings across Kazakhstan have been ransacked and torched in the worst violence the ex-Soviet republic has experienced in 30 years of independence.

Moscow said more than 70 planes were ferrying Russian troops into Kazakhstan, and that these were now helping control Almaty's main airport, recaptured on Thursday from protesters.

The uprising has prompted a military intervention by Moscow at a time of high tension in East-West relations as Russia and the United States gear up for talks next week on the Ukraine crisis.

Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev blamed foreign-trained terrorists for the unrest, without providing evidence.

"The militants have not laid down their arms, they continue to commit crimes or are preparing for them," Tokayev, 68, said in a televised address.

"Whoever does not surrender will be destroyed. I have given the order to law enforcement agencies and the army to shoot to kill, without warning."

The demonstrations began as a response to a fuel price hike but swelled into a broad movement against Tokayev's government and former President Nursultan Nazarbayev.

Nazarbayev, 81, was the longest-serving ruler of any ex-Soviet state until he turned over the presidency to Tokayev in 2019. His family is widely believed to have retained influence in Nur-Sultan, the purpose-built capital that bears his name.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has discussed the situation with Tokayev in several phone calls during the crisis, the Kremlin said on Friday.

SCARED

The protesters in Almaty appeared mainly to come from the city's poor outskirts or surrounding towns and villages. The violence has come as a shock to urban Kazakhs, used to comparing their country favourably to more repressive and volatile ex-Soviet Central Asian neighbours.

"At night when we hear explosions, I am scared," a woman named Kuralai told Reuters. "It hurts to know that young people are dying. This has clearly been planned ... probably our government has relaxed somewhat."

In a state where scant political opposition is tolerated, no high-profile leaders of the protest movement have emerged to issue any formal demands.

One man who attended the first night of protests and who did not want to be identified said most of those who initially turned up wanted to "express solidarity spontaneously", before 100-200 "aggressive youths" started hurling rocks at police.

The Interior Ministry said 26 "armed criminals" had been "liquidated", while 18 police and national guard members had been killed. Those figures appeared not to have been updated since Thursday.

State TV reported more than 3,800 arrests.

Fresh gunfire could be heard on Friday near the main square in Almaty, where troops had fought protesters on Thursday. Armoured personnel carriers and troops occupied the square.

Unrest has been reported in other cities, but the internet has been shut off since Wednesday, making it difficult to determine the extent of the violence.

In Aktau, a city on the Caspian Sea in western Kazakhstan, some 500 protesters gathered peacefully on Friday in front of a government building to call for Tokayev's resignation, a witness told Reuters.

RUSSIAN INFLUENCE

Moscow's swift deployment demonstrated Putin's readiness to use force to maintain influence in the former Soviet Union, at a time when he has also alarmed the West by massing troops near Ukraine, whose Crimean peninsula Russia seized in 2014.

The mission falls under the umbrella of the Collective Security Treaty Organization, comprising Russia and five ex-Soviet allies. Moscow said its force would number about 2,500.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Friday reiterated Washington's concerns about the situation in Kazakhstan and the involvement of Russian-led forces.

"It would seem to me that the Kazakh authorities and government certainly have the capacity to deal appropriately with protests ... so it's not clear why they feel the need for any outside assistance," he told reporters.

Tokayev's administration said the Russians had not been engaged in combat or the "elimination of militants".

Mukhtar Ablyazov, an exiled ex-banker and cabinet minister turned opponent of the government, told Reuters the West must counter Russia's moves, or watch Putin rebuild "a structure like the Soviet Union".

Kazakhstan's other major neighbour, China, has backed Tokayev. State television said President Xi Jinping had told him Beijing opposed any use of force to destabilise Kazakhstan.

Nazarbayev has not been seen or heard since the protests began, though Belarus's state news agency said President Alexander Lukashenko, another close Putin ally, spoke by phone with the former Kazakh leader on Friday.

Tokayev removed Nazarbayev and his nephew from security posts on Wednesday.

Kazakhstan is a major oil producer and the world's top miner of uranium. Global oil prices rose on Friday, fuelled by supply worries. [MKTS/GLOB]


Suspected Islamist militant kills five in Kazakhstan

BY MARIYA GORDEYEVA AND OLZHAS AUYEZOV
Jul 18, 2016
Reuters

A lone gunman with Islamist links killed at least three policemen and two civilians in Kazakhstan's financial capital Almaty on Monday, senior security officials said, the second such attack in less than two months.

Police detained the attacker, identified as 26-year-old Ruslan Kulikbayev, in a shootout on a busy central street after he had gone on the rampage, attacking a police station and an office belonging to the KNB security service.

Kulikbayev had been imprisoned before for robbery and illegally possessing weapons and had "became close to Salafists" in prison, KNB security service head Vladimir Zhumakanov told a Security Council meeting.

Salafists adhere to an ultra-conservative form of Islam.

The shootings will stoke fears of a growing Islamist threat to the oil-producing nation of 18 million people. Last month, men the authorities said were Islamic State sympathizers attacked gun stores and a military facility, killing seven.

Thousands of nationals from Central Asian nations are known to be fighting alongside Islamic State militants in Syria and Iraq, and the authorities have long warned they could return and carry out attacks on home soil.

Kazakhstan is far more prosperous than its post-Soviet neighbors and has been ruled with a firm hand by President Nursultan Nazarbayev since 1989.

But the fall in global oil prices has hit its economy hard and there have been rare outbreaks of violence and public protests since April, initially caused by discontent over proposed land reforms but swiftly attracting others unhappy about wider issues.

Interior Minister Kalmukhanbet Kasymov told the same Security Council meeting that police had first believed that the attacker had accomplices, but had later learned that another man they had detained was driving a car under duress at gunpoint.

Nazarbayev, who chaired the meeting, called the attacks a terrorist act and ordered tighter security in public areas.

Five witnesses told Reuters they had heard gunshots in three parts of Almaty, the mainly Muslim nation's largest city.

"We saw a man with a rifle," one shop worker said by phone. Footage uploaded to the Internet showed a man pointing an assault rifle at a car he tried and failed to stop.

Interior Minister Kasymov said the attacker had shot a policeman guarding a police station, taken his automatic rifle and then opened fire at others, killing one civilian and wounding several policemen.

Kulikbayev then hijacked a car and went to a KNB building where he shot two more policemen.

He hijacked another car, according to Kasymov, before engaging police in the final shootout after which he was captured.

Kasymov said the gunman had also killed a woman the previous night.

A spokeswoman for the state anti-terrorist center told reporters seven people had been wounded in the shooting spree.

The KNB, successor to the Soviet-era KGB, said last month it had detained several members of a group planning "terrorist acts using improvised explosive devices" in the Karaganda region of central Kazakhstan. One suspect blew himself up.


Kazakhstan curbs religious freedom to halt militancy

By Dmitry Solovyov
Oct 13, 2011

(Reuters) - Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev signed a tough religion law Thursday including a ban on prayer rooms in state buildings, aimed at stamping out Islamist militancy but criticized by Kazakhstan's top Muslim cleric and the West.

Nazarbayev, 71, has ruled Kazakhstan for more than 20 years as a secularist autocrat. Until this year, the 70 percent Muslim country largely avoided the Islamist violence seen in other central Asian ex-Soviet states like Uzbekistan and Tajikistan.

But a suicide bombing in May and the arrest in August of a group accused of a terrorist plot raised fears of a surge in militancy, prompting Nazarbayev to call for the new law to help curb extremism.

"The new law ... more clearly defines the rights and duties of religious organizations and outlines the role of the state in strengthening the religious tolerance of our society," Nazarbayev said Thursday during a visit to Shymkent, near the border with Uzbekistan where radical Islam is on the rise.

"Peace and harmony in our multiethnic home are Kazakhstan's most valuable patrimony," he said. The comments were reported on his official website.

The law, swiftly approved by the compliant legislature, has caused heated debate. Article 7 bans prayer rooms in all state institutions. Kazakhstan's Supreme Mufti, Absattar Derbisali, said this could anger pious Muslims and spur extremism.

The law also requires all missionaries in the country to register with the authorities every year.

Rights groups in the West, including the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, have raised concern that it may restrict religious freedom.

Among recent measures to fight Islamist militancy, Kazakhstan temporarily blocked access to a number of foreign Internet sites in August after a court ruled they were propagating terrorism and inciting religious hatred.