Page 58 - bne magazine February 2022_20220208

58 I Special focus I Kazakhstan bne February 2022
Treaty Organization (CSTO) are doing so according to the CSTO principle that its member states can assist one another against foreign aggressors. Tokayev may have referred to “foreign- trained terrorists” and “financially motivated plotters” from abroad,
but he has presented no evidence for these allegations. Putin is in these circumstances vulnerable to charges that he has mounted a police action inside Kazakhstan.
The US on January 7 said it was closely monitoring reports of the deployment of outside troops in Kazakhstan and added that it had questions about whether the forces were legitimately invited to the country.
"We have questions about that deployment precisely because Kazakhstan, the government of
Kazakhstan... has its own resources, and the government is and has been well fortified," US State Department spokesperson Ned Price said.
RFE/RL on January 7 told how its correspondent interviewed an activist with Kazakhstan’s unregistered Democratic Party who was in a crowd of 200 protesters at Almaty’s Republic Square the previous day when, he said, shortly after sundown a group of soldiers opened fire with live ammunition. Aigerim Tuleuzhanova asserted that those who were fired upon were young, unarmed Kazakh activists.
Attempting to push back on Tokayev’s narrative, activists unfurled banners declaring “We are not terrorists!”
and “Tokayev: Don’t shoot us!” Tuleuzhanova said.
Moving ahead, Tokayev, who has faced claims that he so rapidly turned to the CSTO because he was not confident
that the Kazakh armed forces and police force would stay loyal to the regime should the demonstrations intensify, will have difficulties explaining to Kazakhs why Russian – as well as Kyrgyz, Tajik, Belarusian and Armenian – troops are on Kazakh soil.
"Sovereignty is something that the Kazakh population has really fought
for over the years and is extremely proud of," Ben Godwin, a political risk consultant with London-based PRISM, who lived in Kazakhstan for seven years, was quoted as saying by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC). He added: "The idea of potentially losing sovereignty due to the presence of foreign forces is very disturbing to
many within Kazakhstan."
Fake news? Conflicting reports of shooting in Almaty as Russian and Kazakh governments appear to manipulate reporting for own agendas
bne IntelIiNews
Soldiers have started a military operation to clear the streets of Kazakhstan’s commercial capital and largest city, threatening to shoot on sight anyone that ventures abroad.
Russian state-owned news agencies have broadcast dramatic video of squadrons of soldiers walking down a wide street that they claim is close to Republic Square in the heart of the old capital and shooting machine guns at unseen assailants.
Russia’s flagship English-language channel RT reports that dozens are dead, including ten policemen, and that three of those have been “beheaded.”
The problem is that bne IntelliNews’ correspondent in Almaty says that most
www.bne.eu
of the reports are not true, or are at least highly suspect.
Fake news?
Currently it is next to impossible to verify or confirm the many dramatic reports coming out of Almaty. The internet has been shut down. All the independent media outlets and social media apps like the popular Telegram messaging service are not working.
However, Kazakh state media are still releasing information and the Russian state-owned press is also on the ground and broadcasting, including the Kremlin’s RT.
Some independent information is coming out of the country and it seems clear that there have indeed
been shootings and killings of both Kazakh police and civilians. What
is not known is the scale of the casualties and fatalities. bne IntelliNews’ correspondent, reporting by phone, says that there has been violence and fighting but from what he can glean
by calling around to people that live at the scenes of the reported violence, the clashes have been on a smaller scale than some of the reports since January 5 have described with estimates of dozens dead.
The Russian media outlet TASS also reported on the soldiers shooting at Republic Square in the heart of Almaty. The news agency released footage of soldiers in an urban setting shooting down a street at unseen opponents – the source of the video that was used by RT.