In Kazakhstan, the unrest began past month. The hardest time was May 21, when several protest rallies were deemed unsanctioned and dispersed by the police. The cause of the protest stemmed from the proposed amendments to the Land Code, which would increase the maximum term of a lease agreement from 15 to 25 years and allow foreigners to take part in it.
At a briefing of the Central Communications Service in March, Yerbolat Dosayev, Minister of National Economy, said that 1.7 million hectares of agricultural land would be put up for auctions starting on July 1, 2016. As the official said, “The current leaseholders will be provided a discount to buy land, which would amount to 50 percent of its cadastral value in regular installments over 10 years.”
Arkady Dubnov, political scientist and expert on Central Asia, wrote for RBC in Moscow: “For Kazakhs, as they themselves say, the earth is a sacred thing. Historically, it has never been considered someone’s private property. Kazakhs perceived all of it as their own territory, on which they roamed with their cattle from pasture to pasture. Therefore, land, on par with religion and language is one of the three inseparable components of Kazakh national identity. And a threat to lose one of these components can be a serious insult to Kazakh mentality.”
It is not a coincidence that Kazakh intelligentsia spoke up against the possibility to sell land, especially to foreigners. Many respected people in the country have appealed to Nazarbayev to stop the selling of land. For some time, the authorities had remained deaf to such appeals. Until the protest rallies started in the western regions.
People do not trust the authorities much, and are seriously worried that any land leased to foreigners would not come back. Akezhan Kazhegeldin, former Prime Minister of Kazakhstan, now in emigration, suggests that “under the guise of foreigners, the land will be bought by all sorts of offshore companies based in Panama, which cover up our underground millionaires and billionaires... It would be much worse if the land is sold to actual Chinese, Russian, or Western investors who would fight for their rights in international courts.”
People in Kazakhstan are seriously worried about the possible arrival of Chinese businesses, which will be buying land. From the experience they know that investors from China first of all bring their own workers and engineers. They rent the land, they start a family, and then these sites cannot be taken back from them.
In addition to this, the vast majority of citizens are not able to purchase or rent any land at an auction. They simply cannot afford this.
So, the anti-Chinese sentiment is apparent. On the other hand, Beate Eschment, German expert on Central Asia noted, that “if Kazakhstan today is to expect any help to get out of the crisis – in the form of finance or investment – that help could only come from China. However, when the population has so many grudges against the Chinese, we enter a vicious circle.”
In late April, President Nazarbayev tried to soften the intensity of the protests. The sale of land is now banned at least until 1 January 2017. Several ministers were sacked, including Yerbolat Dosayev. Also, in late April a new Ministry of Information and Communications was created, headed by Dauren Abayev, press secretary of the president. This governmental body is tasked with explaining the amendments to the Land Code to the population.
The authorities are seriously alarmed with the protests. State television programs accuse some third party of trying to destabilize the country. The “evidence” is sometimes absurd: random people with dollar bills sticking out of their pockets are shown to have been paid up for participation in the protests. Characteristically, the faces of these people are not shown, as well as the money transfer process. Social networks have derided this program by Kazakh First Channel, but the wave of propaganda did not stop on that. And how else could it be, if the president himself said on May 5 that someone in Kazakhstan wants to arrange a scenario similar to what had happened in Ukraine. And he said that the authority would not allow it; any people who threaten the stability would be severely punished.
The authorities feared the protests on May 21 so much, that on the eve of that day several social networking sites (Facebook, VKontakte, Twitter, and Instagram) and instant messengers (WhatsApp and Viber) stopped working. Officially, it was explained as technical issues. But these issues came very timely.
As the rallies were dispersed, many people were arrested. Including journalists, some of which were from Russian media. They were released soon after. Igor Lepekha, Chairman of the Administrative Police Committee of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, has called the detentions of journalists a “misunderstanding.”
At the same time, they began to arrest opposition members. In Uralsk, authorities raided the offices of the Abyroi NGO. Additionally, Zhanat Yesentaev, one of the NGO’s leaders, is charged with a criminal case. As the Department of Internal Affairs of West Kazakhstan region reports, “during the search in the NGO’s office, the investigatory-operative group had found a Ukrainian flag and 80 arm-bands with the word ‘Zhanaozen’ inscribed on it.” Zhanaozen was the town where unauthorized rallies of oil workers took place in 2011. The police opened fire on the protesters, there were many wounded and killed.
Kazakhstan, despite the measures taken, is in crisis. The country has to organize the “Expo-2017” world exhibition in Astana – another ambitious project, which Nazarbayev managed to bring into the country a few years ago.
Although no one says it explicitly yet, but there is a growing problem of the transition of power. Time takes its toll, and President Nazarbayev is not getting younger. Hence the increased strife between clans. The events described in the article are no exception. After all, the protests began in the cities of the western part of the country, where agricultural land is no problem at all. They extract oil and other minerals, but practically no one is engaged in agriculture.
From the way the protests are organized, one can say that the process is guided by some of the clans. That does not bring any more stability to Kazakhstan.
