ALMATY - Kazakhstan this week canceled,
then re-authorised, elections in a remote oil town
where recent riots stemming from a long-running
oil workers strike left at least 16 dead and more
than 40 buildings burned.
Since the riots
on December 16, Zhanaozen, located east of the
Caspian Sea, has been under a state of emergency,
and arrests of strike leaders have continued. A
diplomat and several journalists and human rights
activists told Inter Press Service (IPS) they were
admitted into the town of 120,000 only with close
police escorts and were severely restricted over
who they could speak with.
They reported
that almost all traces of the shootings had been
obliterated and that repairs were under way at the
burned-out city hall on the main square and the
adjacent headquarters of
UzenMunaiGaz, a
state-owned oil company where the strike unfolded.
Last week, President Nursultan Nazarbayev
signed a decree that extended the state of
emergency, which was due to expire January 5, to
the end of the month, prompting the electoral
commission to deny its citizens the opportunity to
vote for a new parliament in elections scheduled
for January 15. The present one is entirely
composed of members of a coalition led the
president's Nur Otan party.
Though the
government says the town is functioning normally,
the vote cannot be held during the state of
emergency, according to Central Election
Commission Chairman Kuandyk Turgankulov.
"There are only 50,000 voters in the
city," he said. "With high voter turnout expected
across Kazakhstan, there will be no tangible
effect on the outcome of the vote." As for the
possible infringement of voters rights, he said
that "the Constitutional Council doesn't think it
would be the case".
Aidos Sarym, a
political commentator, said that fear of an
embarrassing electoral rout was the likely reason
for the cancellation. "I don't think a lot of
people would have voted for the government party,"
he said, noting that the strikers' cause had
resonated with other inhabitants of the desert
city plagued by water and power outages and high
unemployment.
But four days later, in an
unusual move, a presidential decree reversed the
decision, ruling that the vote could take place in
Zhanaozen after all. "The president took into
account the concerns of Zhanaozen's residents that
their electoral rights were limited by the
Constitutional Council's decision," the statement
said. "His only aim is to give the residents of
Zhanaozen the opportunity to exercise their
constitutional right to vote and be elected to
government and local councils."
Zhanaozen's population soared to 120,000
in 2009 from 55,000 in 1999 as work around the
oilfield expanded, but social services like
housing, schools and hospitals have not followed,
according to local reports.
Despite
spectacular growth over the past decade,
Kazakhstan's expenditures on health and education
are half those of comparable post-communist
countries, and institutionalised corruption means
that only part of these expenditures reach their
intended beneficiaries, several studies have
shown.
While opinion polls show that
Nazarbayev, who has ruled this oil-rich country
five times the size of France since 1989, remains
broadly popular, Western monitors have reported
abuses in all previous elections, where results
often exceed 90% support for government
candidates.
Until now, none of these
elections has triggered the kind of mass protests
recently seen in neighboring Russia or in the Arab
world.
But Bulat Abilov, a leader of the
opposition Social democratic Party, has pledged to
organise just such protests if the vote is less
than transparent. After he led a small group of
protesters in observing a minute of silence for
the victims of Zhanaozen at the central Republic
Square in Almaty, the economic capital, he said
the demonstrations would take place "right here".
Nearly 10,000 workers at OzenMunaiGaz and
nearby KarazhambasMunaiGaz, two major units of the
state exploration and production company, KMG EP,
went on strike last May after they were told that
a promised reinstatement of a Soviet-era cost of
living allowance coefficient would only apply to a
small part of their salary. Production dropped
dramatically.
By July, most of the workers
had returned to their jobs without raises, and
production went back to normal. Some 2,000
remaining strikers were fired and replaced. During
the fall, they were offered jobs with various
contractors but turned them down because they paid
less than their original jobs.
The strike
resulted in the loss of 1.1 million tons of oil,
worth about $700 million, KMG EP has said. The
company reports about $1 billion a year in
profits.
From July, several hundred
strikers held a vigil in the Zhanaozen central
square, sleeping there without tents until
November, witnesses said.
On December 16,
government workers put up a stage and started
playing loud pop music to celebrate Kazakhstan's
20 years of independence from the Soviet Union,
while police tried to clear the square of
strikers. They sparked a riot that, according to
the government, resulted in the burning down of 46
buildings. Several videos on Youtube show police
firing thousands of round of ammunition, with one
plainclothes man caught firing a handgun at
unarmed, retreating demonstrators.
The
government said 16 people were killed and over 100
injured but has not released their names. A strike
leader who asked not to be identified said that in
addition to the 16, 30 more bodies bearing wounds
from bullets or beatings were returned to their
families with death certificates saying they had
died of accidents or natural causes.
Meanwhile, the company has announced that
after being ordered by the president to rehire the
2,000 fired workers, it was creating two
subsidiaries to do so. The company did not set a
timeline, but a spokeswoman said the salaries
would be "around their former level". If
confirmed, this would be a significant reversal in
policy for the company, which maintains that the
strike was illegal and that the 2,000 workers were
fired legally.
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