JAN. 31 2012 (The Conway Bulletin) – Officials in western Kazakhstan ended a week-long strike by 300 workers at an engineering business in Atyrau on the Caspian Sea coast by agreeing to boost their wages by 25%. The deal avoids any risk of a repeat of the acrimonious six-month long strike in Zhanaozen, about 600km south of Atyrau, which ended in riots that killed 16 protesters.
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(News report from Issue No. 75, published on Feb. 2 2012)
JAN. 23 2012 (The Conway Bulletin) – Kazakh security service officers in Almaty raided the HQ of opposition group Alga! and detained several of the banned party’s leaders for inciting riots in the west of Kazakhstan last month which killed at least 16 people. Alga! has said the charges are politically motivated.
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(News report from Issue No. 74, published on Jan. 26 2012)
JAN. 18 2012 (The Conway Bulletin) – The Paris-based intergovernmental International Energy Agency warned that unrest last month in west Kazakhstan could slow investment in the Kazakh oil and gas sector, Bloomberg reported. This is the first warning from a major institution that violence which killed at least 17 people could impact the investment climate.
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(News report from Issue No. 73, published on Jan. 19 2012)
JAN. 10 2012 (The Conway Bulletin) – Kazakh president Nursultan Nazarbayev overruled an earlier decision by the Constitutional Council to cancel voting in a parliamentary election in the town of Zhanaozen. Zhanaozen has been under a state-of-emergency since rioting on Dec. 16 killed at least 16 people.
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(News report from Issue No. 72, published on Jan. 13 2012)
JAN. 4 2012 (The Conway Bulletin) – Nursultan Nazarbayev, Kazakhstan’s president, extended a state-of-emergency by 26 days in Zhanaozen, the town near the Caspian Sea at the centre of rioting last month that killed 16 people. The state-of-emergency had been set to end on Jan. 5. It now ends on Jan. 31 and falls over a parliamentary election planned for Jan. 15.
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(News report from Issue No. 71, published on Jan. 5 2012)
DEC. 26 2011 (The Conway Bulletin) – Looking to impose his authority after the riots, Mr Nazarbayev sacked his son-in-law, Timur Kulibayev, as head of the sovereign wealth fund. Most of the rioters had been ex-oil workers and, as head of the fund, Mr Kulibayev had been in charge of the state energy company. He was seen as a potential successor to Mr Nazarbayev. Umirzak Shukeyev, a deputy PM, replaced Kulibayev as head of the fund.
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(News report from Issue No. 71, published on Jan. 5 2012)
DEC. 18 2011 (The Conway Bulletin) – Riots that have killed at least 16 people in western Kazakhstan are a major challenge to the Kazakh elite.
It was, to put it simply, the biggest display of public discontent with the country’s leaders since independence in 1991.
The authorities have since imposed a state of emergency in the town of Zhanaozen, the centre of the fighting, and flooded the region with military. Protests have now taken root in Aktau, a major nearby oil centre, although there are so far no reports of violence.
Their strategy is simple. They aim to stop protests spreading to cities outside the western region of Mangistau. If they can’t, then the outlook for 2012 is decidedly bumpy.
The authorities’ reaction to the riots was insightful. It felt Soviet. They simply crushed the former oil workers who had occupied the main square in Zhanaozen since mid-May.
The statements that followed were dripping in Soviet language. According to President Nursultan Nazarbayev, the riots were started by selfish bandits and hooligans and the police had fired on them only when they feared for their lives. Reading it felt like 1986.
The bottom line is that in two consecutive civil disorder scenarios, police fired live rounds at protesters and killed several people.
Kazakhstan has prided itself on being an island of stability in volatile post-Soviet Central Asia. That image is looking distinctly battered.
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(News report from Issue No. 70, published on Dec. 22 2011)
DEC. 16 2011 (The Conway Bulletin) – Unprecedented riots broke out in Zhanaozan, west Kazakhstan, on Independence Day. At least 15 people died in fighting between ex-oil workers and police, who opened fire on protesters. The next day rioting spread to another town where police also shot at protesters killing one and injuring 11.
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(News report from Issue No. 70, published on Dec. 22 2011)
DEC. 5 2011 (The Conway Bulletin) – A disputed parliamentary election in Russia on Dec. 4 triggered unprecedented anti-government street demonstrations in Russian cities, protests which will have worried leaders in Central Asia and the South Caucasus.
The people of Central Asia and the South Caucasus have strong historical, business, family and political ties with Russia and what happens there matters.
Politics in Kazakhstan is similarly aligned to Russia and the country is confronting growing pains. President Nursultan Nazarbayev also has to deal with a parliamentary election on Jan. 15.
Although Mr Nazarbayev’s position is far more secure than his Russian counterparts’ he faces lingering issues over his succession policy and commitment to genuine democracy. The compliant Kazakh media has steered away from covering the Russia protests in detail but Mr Nazarbayev certainly wouldn’t want them to linger.
In Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan the media is even more tightly controlled and the impact of the anti-government protests in Moscow will be softer but, again, if they are prolonged they will start to worry their leaders.
In the South Caucasus, Azerbaijan is most prone to an impact from street demonstrations in Russia. Its police force stamped out anti-government protests during the first half of the year and demonstrations in Russia could embolden protesters again.
It is premature to talk of a Slavic Spring in Russia but there is an air of change and this attitude could start to drip into other former Soviet states.
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(News report from Issue No. 68, published on Dec. 8 2011)
NOV. 17 2011 (The Conway Bulletin) – Azerbaijan rejected criticism last week from human rights group Amnesty International that it unfairly cracked down on protests earlier this year. Instead, Azerbaijan’s government said it has increased political tolerance in the 20 years since independence from the Soviet Union.
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(News report from Issue No. 66, published on Nov. 23 2011)
