Riots in Kazakhstan: President allows police to “shoot to kill” without warning

The bloody repression is intensifying in Kazakhstan. After several days of unprecedented riots, which began on Sunday January 2, due to a rise in gas prices, “Constitutional order has been largely restored in all regions”. This is in essence the message sent, Friday, January 7, by Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev. He also indicated that operations to restore public order would continue. “until the total destruction of the militants”. To complete this mission, he announced that he had “ordered to shoot to kill without warning” to the police.

In his televised address, the former Prime Minister of Nursultan Nazarbayev rejected any possibility of negotiating with the protesters, adding that the “terrorists continue to damage property” and to “use weapons against citizens”. He qualified “absurd” calls, especially abroad, to negotiate with the demonstrators with a view to a peaceful resolution of the crisis. “What kind of negotiations can we have with criminals, with murderers? We have had to deal with armed and trained bandits (…) They must be destroyed and it will be done shortly”, he said.

According to President Tokayev, “20,000 bandits” attacked Almaty, the economic capital where the clashes were most chaotic and violent. The latter had “a clear plan of attack, well coordinated actions and a high degree of combat readiness”, he continued, evoking “specialized saboteurs”, at the origin of the clashes with the police. The Interior Ministry, for its part, informed that 26 “armed criminals” had been killed and 18 injured in the riots.

Since the start of the crisis, the violence has left dozens of people dead and more than a thousand injured. Nearly 3,000 people have been arrested. During his speech, Kassym-Jomart Tokaïev thus made a point of “thank especially” his counterpart Vladimir Putin. A contingent of Russian troops and other countries allied with Moscow, which arrived the day before in Kazakhstan, made it possible to support the power in place. “He responded very quickly, and above all in a friendly manner, to my call”, he greeted, to support the Kazakh security forces and protect administrative and strategic buildings.