The 'price for protest' in Kazakhstan: A Video the World Needs to See...And Understand

Yesterday a video from the Central Asian country of Kazakhstan was released on-line. It shows security forces in Zhanaozen advancing against protesters, shooting them, and then beating and stomping on their bodies. The footage confirms earlier reports that a protest by oil workers on Friday, the Kazakhstan day of national independence, had climaxed in violence, with the death of 15 demonstrators and upwards of 100 wounded. Activists claim both figures are much higher, suggesting as many as 55 deaths.
The footage, seemingly shot by two women from the window of a high-rise apartment block, captures the moment that a wave of police fire on unarmed demonstrators, clearly fleeing for their lives. A man, who appears to have collapsed after being shot in the leg, is viciously attacked by a policeman with a baton. As one of the women filming comments, "Look at them, they are just beating them to death." The police continue to advance, hitting the fallen protesters as they pass them, before converging in a group, perhaps to take stock of their carnage.
Before the emergence of this video, accounts by Western media of the events in Zhanaozen strove to bracket the protests in a familiar narrative.Source.

Kazakh opposition leaders are calling for an end to state violence and an independent commission to investigate the brutal crackdown in the Caspian oil town of Zhanaozen, where security forces have shot dead dozens of protesters.(Stratrisks).The town of Zhanaozen in western Kazakhstan has been cut off from the rest of the world since last Friday, when riot police and the military started shooting striking oil workers.“The first six bodies were buried yesterday, while 60 families held prayer services for their dead relatives, even though the bodies still haven’t been handed over to them,” Ainur Kurmanov, a co-chair of the Socialist Movement of Kazakhstan, told a news conference in Moscow on Wednesday. “They know for sure they are dead.”Kazakh trade unions and socialist organizations report at least 70 people killed and over 100 missing, citing their members in the region. Authorities have put the death toll at 16.Yesenbek Ukteshbayev, a leader of the Zhanartu trade union, told the press conference of a doctor in a local hospital, who herself “closed the eyes of 23 [dead] people.”Over 300 have been arrested, according to the trade unions. Some say they saw their friends taken away or killed, but their names are missing from official records of those dead and injured.“Screams and groans are repeatedly heard from the local detention center,” Kurmanov said. “Yesterday they were seen taking out several rolled carpets from there. In the Muslim tradition, bodies are rolled in carpets.”According to Ukteshbayev, relatives of those kept in the detention center say they were driven out into the freezing yard naked and doused with cold water from hoses.“Only the fascists used such methods,” said Ukteshbayev.In Aktau, the regional capital, Kenzhegali Suyeyev, the head of a trade union commission investigating the tragedy, said people in Zhanaozen were shocked at the violence used by state forces, and had no reaction to the government’s offer of jobs in different regions.“Men have been beaten up and arrested… What reaction can there be when people are shot with assault rifles, and those wounded are finished off?Even the Germans didn’t do that,” Suyeyev told The Moscow News by telephone. “People are shocked – they can’t believe they live in a democracy. These are workers, children, women that died – they were unarmed, you understand?”A Novaya Gazeta correspondent who managed to get into Zhanaozen reported that at least 64 bodies turned up in the town’s morgue on Dec. 16-17.Korkel, a woman who was visiting her sister in Zhanaozen and went to the local hospital to help there, told correspondent Yelena Kostyuchenko: “There was no cold water in the morgue to wash the bodies. I started to count the bodies. They were put in a pile, one on top of another.Twenty-one bodies were brought there on the 16th. At 9pm Tamila, who works there, closed it, and I went home. But more bodies continued to be brought. By 9am on Dec. 17th another 43 were brought.”The Kazakh service of Radio Liberty, Radio Azattyk, managed to reach several Zhanaozen residents on the phone.“Last night my brother went to a drugstore, and police beat him up and took him away from there. They took his money and phone,” said one resident, called Gulbarshyn. “Some can’t even find their kids. Many parents are standing in front of the police station. But they won’t show them their kids. Please tell the world what we’re saying.”Another resident, Aigul Zhalgasbayeva, told Radio Azattyk: “We can’t go outside, can’t even go to work. We eat what we have [at home]. Riot police are taking the guys somewhere. We don’t know what’s going on with them.”Read the full story here.More here.