Amazing. Polish news also reports titles like this but they at least mention in the text “shoot without warning at any armed person who does not step down”. Why is BBC report missing this part of info?
That is a direct lie. It is said about anybody wearing arms and refusing to surrender.
There are really peaceful protests proceeding in some areas w/o any issues.
Al Jazeera is an outlet for the Muslim world. Sometimes their interests lie with the west, sometimes not. In general they are anti-Russian though, as Russia has been fighting Islamic militants for years (often ones armed by the US and Islamic nations).
Just cause they are Muslim dosent make them Islamic militants. "For years" implies Chechen forces fighting for independence, which has nothing to do with the West or the US. Russia has crushed any autonomy from any minority, Muslim or otherwise. Dont frame it like the war on terror, that would be dishonest.
You don't remember the Moscow train bombing? Or Moscow theater hostage crisis? Or any of the other number of attacks carried out by self-professed Islamic militants from said regions?
It's funny how people don't remember any of the history of the eastern bloc that's literally happened within my own adult life, and I'm in my 30s...
Does this "fight for independence" thing really include blowing bombs in subway, taking children hostages, blowing up airplanes, etc etc etc?
Or it only does if it involves Russia?
>Just cause they are Muslim dosent make them Islamic militants.
This is central Asia, islamic militants fighting for independence venn diagram is basically a circle. Kazakhstan is/wa remarkable for being an ostensibly "secular" state with variety of security arrangements to contain extremistism. But large groups in the country, from the disenfranchised to the elite have been looking towards Saudi wealth, Pakistani nukes, and Taliban victory in Afghanistan for another vision.
The Muslim world stretches from Africa, through the Baltic states, through the Middle east and into Asia. Most of them couldn't even read it easily. Al Jazeera belongs only to Qatar, it's not an outlet for all Muslims who make up 25% of the world's population
"The militants have not laid down their arms, they continue to commit crimes or are preparing for them. The fight against them must be pursued to the end. Whoever does not surrender will be destroyed," President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev said in a televised address.
"I have given the order to law enforcement agencies and the army to shoot to kill without warning."
You just make things up as you go. What do you expect to happen to people who steal weapons from looted police stations and shoot at the army and state forces?
Do you really believe that Western states would deal with this in any other way? Do you remember what happened after 2005 London bombings? Do you remember how the police in Brussels dealt with Paris attackers? Do you think 6th of Jan 2021 would look different if the mob opened fire at the police?
You mean "according to the interior ministry". Of course the government will make it sound like it is the real victim here (while also celebrating its Kill to Death Ratio). The government also claims there are "20,000 bandits" who it "[has] to destroy ... soon". Comparison to Tienanmen could be an understatement, if the government achieves its goals.
Are you willing to say that all the violent and armed (and properly filmed and documented) clashes + captures of airports and govt buildings were only done by the police/army themselves? This is really wild.
No, I'm saying that if there are really 20,000 armed fighters trying to take over the country, then the government should admit that it's fighting a civil war.
This is what you're shown or what you want to see.
I've seen a lot of videos of armed rebels.
BTW, the video you are referring to is NOT Russian uniforms, it is Kazakhstan army. This is again a sample of propaganda you receive. The uniforms are completely different.
The local sources in social media all were mentioning protester fatality numbers in hundreds. They are definitely not reliable, however, I would consider the official numbers reported by KZ government - which BBC is quoting - as even less trustworthy than random social media posts.
Until we have better data I think that it is entirely appropriate to treat all current data from KZ government as intentionally falsified and either apply a reasonable multiplier (historically from other similar cases, a 10x multiplier seems appropriate; certainly that would be a better estimate than accepting their reports at face value, in similar earlier situations the reports always have been intentionally adjusted) or treat the local estimates as the best estimates currently available.
Considering the article is trying to make the KZ government look bad, I'd say the part that appears less biased is relevant.
The whole point of HN is to comment on the article. BBC is obviously UK government propaganda, so the fact their headline is clickbait and the little data they do include doesn't support it is relevant.
Why should the UK-propaganda even have a stance on Kazakhstan? This sound like the usual russian troll approach of "Everyone does everything, so bad is relative" fog grenade.
Russia seems to be pretty run-down lately in the east. Especially with Chinese investments basically buying out the usual province robber barons and slowly replacing the owner-caste.
Do you have any basis for the claim that "Kazakhstan's current government is a Russian ally."? President Tokayev seems to mostly continue the course of carefully balancing Kazakhstans national independence with all their foreign relations, so one could as well claim that Kazakhstan current government a chinese ally or a european ally, given that they are not at war with either and those are the three largest trade partners of Kazakhstans. In order of export trade volume: EU, China, Russia and for import trade volume Russia, China, EU. Note that Kazhakstan exports five times more than it imports. (Source: oec.world and comtrade.un.org)
I see how my comment was badly worded and misunderstandable, my point is to refute the strong undertone that a nation can only ever be allied with one side of a cold war bloc as outdated, overly simplistic and completely missing the actual reality of politics and economics in the region.
The data is included because there not much verifiable source to come by. Think about your logic -- BBC is UK propaganda who wants to make Kazakhstan look bad, yet they cited government's number and quoted the president, not anyone from the protesters? The government is a party of the conflict, yet you consider their reported number believable?
According to the article, the reason for the protests is a hike in fuel prices. I'm going now in a tangent, but I wonder how much more of this we are going to see everywhere, specially if governments acted in the best interest of our environment and did everything in their power to prevent people from using fossil fuels.
In Kazakhstan, gov't subsidized gas was being smuggled from Almaty to neighboring China and Kyrgystan in order to sell at market prices - triple the amount.
This caused a massive black market to emerge, so Kazakhstan raised prices closer to the market levels to curb the black market and the organized crime that comes with it.
That is why the protesters are so well organized, and why it is specifically violent in Almaty.
About half of the world (by number, not population) is authoritarian, and only <10% would be full democracies. Yet there are very few ongoing civil wars. I don't think being democratic or authoritarian really matters much to most people, as long as they agree with the policies.
The world only looks more authoritarian because some of the largest countries (China and Russia) are. They thankfully are stable. In Africa and the Middle East, where there is a lot of authoritarianism, you also see a lot of civil unrest. But even though authoritarianism is highly correlated with civil unrest, it doesn't necessarily cause it (indeed, it can be caused by it).
> I don't think being democratic or authoritarian really matters much to most people, as long as they agree with the policies.
In one system, if you don't agree with policies, you can "vote the turkeys out", in the other system, if you don't agree...well, hopefully the authoritarians are receptive, because your only other option is violent revolution.
Authoritarian regimes are also very brittle, they break easily when enough pressure is applied (but "enough" is a higher threshold like concrete).
yeah. But if one disagrees with the policies, it makes a lot of difference if the system is authoritarian or not.
Reminds me of a report by Radio Yerevan: all free citizens questioned told the ministry of national security that they are happy with the government and agree with its policies. In other news a series of arrests have been made against dissident groups planing violence against nation and government.
This is basically saying that the gas prices were used as an convenient excuse to start protests, which obviously had a different (and unknown, except for violence) agenda.
The question is: which barrel? And how to differ a planned violent uprising from a popular uprising? How can a popular peaceful uprising capture so many important building so fast?
Well in general people kind of know which buildings are important and we are not talking medieval castles that require massive upfront planning to besiege, they probably just walked in and took them over.
Curious how this unrest can happen, like a switch was flipped, given the circumstances on the other Russian border country with Ukraine. Coincidental timing if nothing else, right?
A switch was flipped? Did you forget about 30 years of dictatorship, nepotism and corruption? If a dam collapses, do you also think it happens by some sort of switch?
Also, I find it amusing that the West is always mentioned as potential factor, yet the bigger picture is rarely mentioned: Kazakhstan is a resource rich country with low population, sandwiched between two countries with huge ambition. China has much stake in Kazakhstan as any other countries, and probably more.
When global gas prices rose this year, a black market emerged in Kazakhstan to smuggle out gov't subsidized gas to neighboring Kyrgystan and China (sold at triple the price). As the price of global gas went up, this black market became more profitable, more organized, and more controlled by organized crime.
Remember also that Kazakhstan's largest city (and former capital in 2019), Almaty, is located by the Southern border. In an effort to curb this black market, the domestic price of gas raised much closer to the global market rate. Not surprisingly, the unrest was most violent and most well organized in Almaty.
There is also an undercurrent of ethnic conflict between the ethnic Kazakh people and the ethnic Russia population. The former government has been working to switch from the Cyrillic alphabet to the Latin one, sending out language police to ensure businesses don't do business in Russian, and probably most importantly, talking to the US to establish US air bases.
> working to switch from the Cyrillic alphabet to the Latin one
> talking to the US to establish US air bases
I haven't read about this anywhere, but it sounds highly important considering Russia just sent in their troops. Do you have sources for these two claims?
Don't overvalue correlation. Kazhakstan has old contracts with Russia about (military) riot police support (called Collective Security Treaty Organisation) they are neighbors which has a logistical benefit and many Kazhaks speak russian, allowing a limited amount of communication, compared to, lets say, the french foreign legion (think: announcing surrender, asking for medical help, civilians that are not rioting). Lastly calling in foreign mercenaries to squelch unrest is a very old tactic as they are less likely to switch sides.
They lifted price caps on liquified petroleum gas on January 1st. It is used for heating, cooking, hot water, and most cars there run on LPG. Prices doubled overnight. Other reasons for unrest, but that was the switch flip / last straw.
