Russian troops out of Kazakhstan! For democracy and workers’ rights!

Submitted by AWL on 11 January, 2022 - 3:25 Author: Dan Katz
Protesters in Kazakhstan

The price of Liquid Petroleum Gas (LPG), a cheap alternative to petrol used by car drivers in Kazakhstan, was hiked on New Year’s Day.

The cost of a litre of LPG had been 50 tenge (about 10 pence) for most of 2021, jumping to 120 tenge on 1 January. Drivers began to protest.

In Zhanaozen, an oil producing town of 160,000 in the country’s west, roads were blocked.

The regime is particularly wary of actions by the oil workers in Zhanaozen, where a massacre of strikers took place in December 2011.

There were more officially registered strikes in Kazakhstan in the first half of 2021 (39) than the entire period from 2018-20 (30). Almost all of the recent strikes took place in the Mangystau oil-producing region in the west, where workers demanded wage increases to combat inflation.

Most strike action was taken by oil workers or employees in associated industries, but health care and public transport workers also took industrial action.

Most of the strikes won some concessions on their wage demands.

Across the Mangystau region similar public demonstrations were held in many towns. Unregistered political parties called rallies and pickets in the capital, Nur-Sultan, and in Almaty, the commercial centre of the country.

The internet began to go down and news websites were blocked.

By the evening of January 3 the Prime Minister’s office had declared that the price of LPG would be reduced in all petrol stations in Mangystau. In the town of Aqtau on the Caspian Sea protesters continued a rally, not believing the concession would actually be enacted. When Mangystau’s governor Nogaev turned up in Aqtau town square to repeat the government’s promises he was chased off by the crowd, who shouted, “Get out! We’re tired of fairy tales!”

The protests in Almaty then turned very violent, very quickly. Almaty is in the south of the country, nearly 2000km east of Mangystau.

Major gun battles and explosions were heard in Almaty. It was reported that police stations had been stormed and large numbers of public building were ransacked and burnt.

18 members of the security forces are reported killed together with many dozens of protesters.

Such violence diverges widely from what has happened before in Kazakhstan.

President Kassym-Jomart Toqaev declared a state of emergency and on 5 January asked Russian president Putin to help provide security. Russian paratroops were in the country within hours and it seems that 2500 troops from the Russian-dominated Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) are now in Kazakhstan. Toqaev announced a shoot-to-kill policy.

The Kazakh government now claims to be in control although gunfire can still be heard on Almaty’s streets. The government states 6000 protesters have been detained.

One possible explanation for the extreme violence in Almaty is that a part of the state machine was moving against Tokayev, using the protests as a cover for a coup. If Tokayev could not trust his own police and army that would also explain the call for Russian military help.

Tokayev, a former Soviet diplomat, was handpicked by former president Nursultan Nazarbaev who stepped down in 2019 but continues to hold on to a lot of power behind the scenes. Nazarbaev’s base in the capital Nur-Sultan, which he named after himself.

Much of the public’s anger has been directed at Nazarbaev and his corrupt family who have run a repressive kleptocracy since the fall of the USSR.

Karim Masimov, until last week head of the internal security service, and a man closely aligned with Nazarbaev, was arrested on 8 January and accused of treason. This looks like Tokayev is attempting to consolidate his power.

Of course the presence of Russian troops will not come cost-free for Tokayev. Putin will expect Kazakhstan to back Russian policy more closely.

And Putin also has his own concerns. The Kazakh people may well react against the presence of foreign troops who have been brought in to keep a local dictator in power. And here is another regime in chaos on Russia’s border, whose rulers run a system which looks remarkably like the one Putin presides over in Moscow.

Comments

Submitted by AWL on Mon, 10/01/2022 - 13:22

In Kazakhstan, there is now a real popular uprising and from the very beginning the protests were of a social and class nature, since the doubling of the price of liquefied gas on the exchange was only the last straw in an overflowing cup of patience.

After all, the demonstrations began precisely in Zhanaozen at the initiative of the oil workers, which became a kind of political headquarters of the entire protest movement.

And the dynamics of this movement is indicative, since it began as a social protest, it then began to expand, and labour collectives used rallies to put forward their own demands for a 100% increase in wages, cancellation of optimisation results, improvement of working conditions, and freedom of trade union activity. As a result, on 3 January, the entire Mangistau region was engulfed in a general strike, which spread to the neighbouring Atyrau region.

It is noteworthy that already on 4 January, Tengizchevroil oil workers went on strike, where the participation of American companies reaches 75%. It was there that in December last year, 40,000 workers were laid off and a new series of layoffs was planned. They were subsequently supported during the day by the oilmen of the Aktobe and West Kazakhstan and Kyzylorda regions.

Moreover, in the evening of the same day, strikes of miners from the ArmelorMittal Temirtau company began in the Karaganda region and of copper smelters and miners from the Kazakhmys corporation, which can already be regarded as a general strike in the entire mining industry of the country.

And here they also put forward demands for higher wages, lowering the retirement age, the right to their own trade unions and strikes.

At the same time, indefinite rallies on Tuesday began already in Atyrau, Uralsk, Aktyubinsk, Kyzyl-Orda, Taraz, Taldykorgan, Turkestan, Shymkent, Ekibastuz, in the cities of the Almaty region, and in Almaty itself, where the merging of streets appeared on the night of 4/5 January in an open clash of demonstrators with the police, as a result of which the city akimat [government centre] was temporarily seized. This caused Kassym-|Jomart Tokayev to declare a state of emergency.

It should be noted that these demonstrations in Almaty were attended mainly by unemployed youth and internal migrants living in the suburbs of the metropolis and working in temporary or low-paid jobs. And attempts to calm them down with promises by reducing the gas price to 50 tenge, separately for the Mangistau region and Almaty, have not satisfied anyone.

The decision of Kassym-Jomart Tokayev to dismiss the government, and then remove Nursultan Nazarbayev [the former dictator] from the post of chairman of the Security Council, also did not stop the protests, since on 5 January, mass protest rallies began in the regional centres of Northern and Eastern Kazakhstan, where they had not previously existed – in Petropavlovsk, Pavlodar, Ust-Kamenogorsk, and Semipalatinsk. At the same time, attempts were made to storm the buildings of regional akimats in Aktobe, Taldykorgan, Shymkent, and Almaty.

In Zhanaozen itself, at their indefinite rally, workers formulated new demands – the resignation of the incumbent president and all Nazarbayev officials, the restoration of the 1993 Constitution and the associated freedoms to create parties and trade unions, plus release of political prisoners and an end of repression. A council of aksakals [elders] was immediately created, which became an informal authority.

Thus, the demands and slogans that are now used in different cities and regions were broadcast to the entire movement, and the struggle received a political content. Attempts are also being made on the ground to create committees and councils to coordinate the struggle.

At the same time, troops were pulled together in Almaty, Aktau, and Zhanaozen, and if everything went peacefully in the Mangistau region and the soldiers refused to disperse the protesters, then shootings began in the southern capital, and on the night of 5/6 January special forces were introduced, which began a clean-up of the airport and neighbourhoods captured by the rebels. According to various sources, there are already dozens killed by the demonstrators.

In this situation, there is a danger of violent suppression of all protests and strikes, and here it is necessary to completely paralyse the country with a general strike. Therefore, it is urgent to form unified action committees on a territorial and production basis in order to provide organised resistance to military and police terror.

In this regard, the support of the entire international labour movement, communist movement, and organised Left is necessary in order to organise a large-scale campaign in the world.

The socialist movement of Kazakhstan demands:

1) An immediate cessation of hostilities against the people and the withdrawal of troops from the cities!

2) Immediate resignation of all Nazarbayev officials, including President Tokayev!

3) Release of all political prisoners and detainees!

4) Ensuring the right to create trade unions and political parties and to hold strikes and meetings!

5) Legalisation of the activities of the banned Communist Party of Kazakhstan and the Socialist Movement of Kazakhstan!

We call on all the workers and working people of the country to implement in practice the demand of the executed oil workers of Zhanaozen – to nationalise, under the control of labour collectives, the entire extractive and large-scale industry of the country!

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