Kazakhstan is a darker place after Zhanaozen

Kazakhstan is a darker place after the Zhanaozen tragedy, and there had been other disturbing events since then. 

The shooting of 17 men in and around the oil town of Zhanaozen in December had shaken the nation The Zhanaozen tragedy, as it became known, followed a six-month strike by workers at the huge Uzen oilfield. 

It erupted on December 16, 2011, the 20th anniversary of Kazakhstani independence, when enraged workers started wrecking the stage set up for the celebrations. Police opened fire killing 14 people in the town. Another three were killed in riots in nearby Shepte the following day. 

Then there were two more bloody incidents in the summer. 

The bodies of 14 border guards and one civilian were found at a burnt out border post on the Kazakh-Chinese border in June. A soldier serving at the post was arrested and confessed but later withdrew his confession saying he had been forced to sign. 

Shortly after I arrived in Astana in August 2012, the grisly discovery of 11 bodies, all with multiple stab wounds, was made in the Ile-Alatau national park near Almaty. They included several national park employees, while other bodies had not yet been identified, and the motive was not known. 

Kazakhstan had always seemed a safe place to live, definitely in comparison to some of the roughish parts of London where I had previously lived (I shared a flat in Hackney when I moved there after university). But now it seemed increasingly sinister. I think I had mistaken the lack of casual violence and street harassment for a safer society.

One night shortly after I arrived in Astana, I was browsing flats on Krisha, when suddenly there was a tremendous booming. 

Gunfire! I thought. All the car alarms went off and people from the nearby apartment blocks started flooding into the street. What was it, I wondered frantically. An invasion? (Unlikely since we were hundreds of kilometres from the border.) A revolution? A terrorist attack on the Akorda?

  The booming continued, then just as suddenly it stopped. Everyone went back inside again, and the car alarms gradually rang to an end. 

I met a local acquaintance, the former press secretary of the Kazakhstani Communist Party, for lunch the next day and he laughed when I asked him about this. He told me that it was merely the gun salute welcoming home Kazakhstan’s triumphant Olympic team from London.