[Kazakhstan] Manifestants face à l’armée à Aktaou ce lundi

Nouvelles manifestations au Kazakhstan d’employés du pétrole

(…) Près de 400 manifestants, dont certains étaient équipés d’armes automatiques, se sont opposés à la police sur la grande place d’Aktau, capitale de la région du Mangistau. (…)

Leur presse (Reuters), 19 décembre 2011.

Kazakhstan : des milliers de manifestants contre la répression

Plusieurs milliers de personnes protestaient, lundi 19 décembre dans l’ouest du Kazakhstan, contre les violences des trois derniers jours dans cette région pétrolifère, survenues après la répression vendredi d’une émeute à Janaozen, faisant au moins quinze morts selon les autorités.

Les forces de police anti-émeutes se déploient dans le centre-ville d'Aktaou, dans le sud-ouest du Kazakhstan, dimanche 18 décembre.

Environ trois mille personnes étaient rassemblées à Aktaou, la principale ville de cette région située sur la rive orientale de la mer Caspienne, pour appeler les autorités à mettre fin aux violences et retirer les troupes de la ville de Janaozen. Les manifestants se tenaient près de la principale place d’Aktaou, bloquée par la police anti-émeute, en scandant des slogans tels que : « Ne tirez pas sur le peuple ! »

Des employés des gisements de pétrole de Karazhanbas se sont joints au rassemblement lundi. « Les employés des gisements pétroliers ont arrêté le travail, mais les pompes sont alimentées à l’électricité, donc elles fonctionnent toujours », a expliqué le chef du parti non reconnu d’opposition Alga Vladimir Kozlov. (…)

Leur presse (LeMonde.fr), 19 décembre 2011.

Almaty

Janaozen

Unrest in Kazakhstan on 20th anniversary of independence shows rare hint of instability

ZHANAOZEN, Kazakhstan — In his hospital bed, Ruslan Kenzhebekov writhes in pain. Instead of celebrating Kazakhstan’s independence, the 26-year-old took a bullet in his midriff.

An unemployed resident of Zhanaozen, he is one of 20 young men lying in hospital in the remote and dusty oil town at the centre of Kazakhstan’s deadliest violence in decades. At least 15 people — and some suspect many more — have been killed.

The clashes shattered Kazakhstan’s image of stability on the same day Central Asia’s largest economy was celebrating the 20th anniversary of its independence from the Soviet Union.

“We are encountering such a situation for the first time. Never before has there been a state of emergency in any Kazakh town,” said Amanzhol Kabylov, the commandant appointed to restore order in Zhanaozen.

About 150 km inland from the Caspian Sea, across arid plains where wild horses roam, Zhanaozen has been picketed for seven months by striking oil workers demanding higher hardship pay for the dangerous work that they do.

Frustrations have been building since state-controlled KazMunaiGas Exploration Production, which says the strikes were illegal, sacked nearly a thousand workers.

On Dec. 16, the town exploded. Protesters, many wearing their overalls from the oilfields, stormed a stage set up for an Independence Day concert before looting and burning down buildings. They clashed with police, with deadly consequences.

President Nursultan Nazarbayev, who has prioritised economic growth and stability over democratic freedoms in two decades in power, declared a state of emergency in Zhanaozen until Jan. 5. Movement in and out of the town is restricted.

Authorities have pinned the blame on “criminal elements” who infiltrated the town and are using the oil workers’ protests for their own interests. About 700 people have been brought in for questioning, mostly to establish their identity.

Armoured personnel carriers, army trucks and 20-strong squads of riot police patrol the town of 90,000 people. With such a heavy security presence, there were no signs of further violence. Reuters travelled with a police escort.

Armed guards kept around 150 relatives of those detained or killed from entering the police station grounds. Soldiers patrolled rooftops while the crowd of mostly middle-aged women stood silently, shielding their faces from the biting cold.

One woman, who had been allowed through the barricade, said her son had been arrested, beaten and robbed of 50,000 tenge (about $340) while in detention. She declined to give her name.

“Where’s the order they’re talking about, if they themselves are doing this?” she said.

A middle-aged man stood beside her on the steps outside the three-storey police building. He said a desperate search for his missing relative had ended in the town’s morgue. “That was my blood,” he said, also declining to identify himself.

Inside the police station, up a set of crumbling stairs, the commandant explained that tough policing was needed in such an unprecedented situation.

“There’s no other way to do this. For as long as the situation hasn’t normalised, everybody will be checked thoroughly,” said Kabylov, who is also the chief of police for Mangistau region.

Several young men were brought into the police station, hands clasped behind their heads. Of those brought in for questioning, 49 have so far been arrested. Some were allegedly in possession of stolen mobile phones and other property.

BEATEN, DETAINED

It has been a trying few days for Zhanyl Aitmukhanova, a senior medical assistant at the hospital. She fought back tears as she described what happened to her two sons.

Her elder son, aged 22, was detained because he was not carrying identification. “They took him right in front of me,” she said, speaking through a surgical mask.

Her 20-year-old son remains in intensive care, having just regained consciousness after a severe beating to the head. Aitmukhanova said her son was nowhere near the square on Dec. 16: “He simply went out on the streets the next day.”

All of the victims still in hospital are young men, mostly in their twenties. Deputy chief doctor Raushan Zhaparova said most of the people on her watch had gunshot wounds or head traumas. In all, 99 people were admitted on December 16 and 17.

“I was lucky, because my relatives found me and took me to hospital. Otherwise I’d be dead,” a 30-year-old man said from his bed. He shared his room with two other gunshot victims.

“There were 500 people lying on that square,” he said, too afraid to give his name. He could not say whether those he saw were dead or wounded. Like others on the ward, he was unable to identify those who fired the shots.

Some residents, including those who have taken their protests to the regional capital Aktau, question the official death toll. Estimates, unproven, range up to 60 or 70 dead — although this is strongly denied by the authorities.

The town morgue, a squat whitewashed building just off the main square, was locked. Groups of riot police picked their way through a rubbish heap and debris nearby. Officials say that 14 people died in Zhanaozen itself, and one in the town of Shetpe.

Sairan Khangereyev, a doctor at the hospital, remembers the only woman confirmed among the dead. “She was here. She had a wound to her neck.” His voice tailed off. When asked whether she died, he just nodded.

BACK TO NORMAL?

Approaching Zhanaozen from the west, cars that have just crossed the lowest point below sea level in the entire former Soviet Union are stopped and searched by masked special forces carrying automatic rifles.

There are 19 checkpoints around the perimeter of the town. The gas-processing plant, a tangle of pipes on the outskirts of town, is guarded round-the-clock and reinforcements have been sent to secure the oilfields.

Kabylov, the commandant, wears blue camouflage. He said he tours the town regularly to assess the security situation.

“Everybody has one question: when will we start living a normal life again?” he said. “Markets, shops, chemists, hairdressers, dentists — all of them will be working tomorrow or the day after.”

The clean-up operation has begun, but it will take longer than two days. Saken, a 50-year-old volunteer, gave only his first name while loading debris into a truck outside the burnt out shell of the local oil company headquarters.

“We’re collecting all the burnt documents,” he said, a cigarette dangling from his lips. “There’s nothing much else here. They looted most of it and then set the place on fire.”

Inside, broken glass crunched underfoot. The smell of charred wood lingered among the smashed-up desks and overturned chairs where employees of Uzenmunaigas, the local unit of KazMunaiGas Exploration Production, had sat a few days earlier.

A discarded box for a Hewlett Packard laser jet printer lay on the floor. Packets of pasta and parts of a destroyed computer keyboard littered the floor. New Year decorations had been ripped down and a tree toppled and burned.

The adjacent Aruana hotel and the akimat — the Kazakh word for local government headquarters — were also destroyed. The edges of the blue-and-yellow national flag still flying from the roof were singed, black and ragged.

Opposite, the stage for the ill-fated celebrations was still standing at one end of the enormous central square. The toppled New Year tree lay across its centre; another reminder.

“I live nearby. I’m just on my way home,” said an elderly woman crossing the square, gesturing at the four-storey Soviet-built apartment blocks behind the stage.

But like the other lonely figures crossing the empty space where thousands had stood a few days earlier, she said she wasn’t there on Dec. 16. Nobody appeared willing or able to say what happened.

Leur presse (Robin Paxton, Reuters), 19 décembre 2011.

Kazakhstan protesters face armed police after bloody clashes

(…) On Sunday, about 500 angry protesters gathered near the main square of Aktau, a city of 160,000 on the Caspian Sea, some 1,600 miles south-west of the capital, Astana.

Braving biting frost, they faced a large force of black-clad riot police holding shields. Some policemen were armed with automatic rifles.

“Take the troops out of Mangistau,” read a banner in Kazakh held by a dozen protesters.

One protester, Sarsekesh Bairbekov, said he had been fired by oil firm Karazhanbasmunai (KBM) in May. “I worked there for 20 years. I was a welder and lost an eye,” the 58-year-old said. His wage was 120,000 tenge (£520) before he was fired.

KBM is jointly owned by the London-listed KazMunaiGas Exploration Production and Citic, China’s biggest state investment company.

“We want them to take away the troops,” Bairbekov said, referring to the state of emergency imposed in Zhanaozen after the riots. “They killed local people,” he added, still wearing maroon and blue KBM overalls.

Many protesters questioned the official death toll announced after the riots in Zhanaozen.

One oil worker, who declined to be named, said he had visited a blood donor centre in Aktau. “It is working round-the-clock. If only 10 people were killed, why is it working round-the-clock?” he asked.

Nurlan Mukhanov, deputy chief doctor at the Mangistau regional hospital in Aktau, said 35 wounded had been brought from Zhanaozen and another three from Shetpe. “The majority have gunshot wounds,” Mukhanov said. “We should be ready for any situation.”

A large group of people supporting Zhanaozen protesters stopped a train carrying more than 300 passengers on Saturday, the Kazakh prosecutor general’s office said in a statement. Most later left but some 50 “hooligans” had set the diesel locomotive on fire and moved into the nearby village of Shetpe, setting the new year tree on fire, smashing shop windows and throwing petrol bombs at police.

“Taking into account the fact that the hooligans presented a real threat to the life and health of peaceful citizens and policemen, the latter were forced to use weapons.” One of the 12 people brought to a local hospital with gunshot wounds died later, the statement said.

In Aktau, numerous posters of Nazarbayev’s ruling party, Nur Otan, dot the dusty streets, which are lined by green and white painted Soviet-era apartment blocks.

“The authorities don’t really know what is happening in their own home,” said Ivan Rabayev, a 74-year-old retired construction worker. “Kazakhs are shooting Kazakhs.”

The riots began on Friday when sacked oil workers and sympathisers stormed a stage erected for an independence day party and smashed sound equipment in Zhanaozen, a city of some 90,000 people.

They later set fire to the city hall, the headquarters of a local oil company, a hotel and dozens of other buildings, including trade centres and houses. They also burned cars and buses and plundered cash machines.

The clashes soured national celebrations marking the 20th anniversary of independence from the Soviet Union and unnerved a government focused on stability and economic growth. State-controlled KazMunaiGas sacked 989 workers in Zhanaozen after staff went on strike for better pay and conditions in May. It said 2,500 people were on strike at the height of the dispute, but workers’ representatives put the maximum number at almost 16,000.

One sacked oilman, who declined to be named, said: “People have been on strike for seven months and the authorities are saying that hooligans and alcoholics are causing this trouble. It’s all lies.”

Leur presse (The Guardian), 18 décembre 2011.