Activists staged an unsanctioned rally on the birthday of the first president, Nursultan Nazarbayev, and recalled all his crimes. Law enforcement officers detained all the participants and took them to the police station.
On July 6, Kazakhstan officially celebrates the Day of the Capital since it was on this day in 1994 that a decision was made to transfer the capital from Almaty to Akmola (the former name of the city of Nur-Sultan). But unofficially, everyone knows very well that July 6 is also the birthday of the first president of Kazakhstan, Nursultan Nazarbayev.
Meanwhile, against the background of the arrests of Nursultan Nazarbayev’s relatives and close associates in Kazakhstan, they began to talk about moving the day of the capital to another date.
Just a week ago, a member of the Senate (the upper house of the parliament of the republic) Akmaral Alnazarova said that the postponement of the celebration could be considered in the future so that it would be tied to the historical dates of the city itself.
However, on July 5, Deputy Prime Minister Yeraly Tugzhanov, in an interview with Kazakh media, noted that there were no grounds for moving up Capital Day to another date. “Every year, as the birthday of the city of Nur-Sultan was celebrated, this is how it will be celebrated. We are not celebrating the birthday of one person – we are celebrating the Day of the capital, the city of Nur-Sultan,” the Deputy Prime Minister emphasized.
However, unlike previous years under the rule of Nazarbayev, this year the Day of the Capital is celebrated very modestly – without pomposity, without the arrival of world-famous stars, and without mass festivities in a big way.
In Almaty, civil activists even staged an unsanctioned protest on the topic of “Nursultan’s Crimes.”
About 20 people gathered near the monument to Abai, mostly women. In their hands were posters listing the crimes of the first president. Among them are the ruined education and economy, the humiliating and plight of the Kazakh language, corrupt courts, police, prosecutors, the death of the famous poet and dissident Aron Atabek, the murder of opposition figures Zamanbek Nurkadilov and Altynbek Sarsenbaev, the massacre in Zhanaozen in December 2011 and not less bloody events in Almaty in January of this year, as well as the arrest of Zhanbolat Mamai, leader of the unregistered Democratic Party.
By the way, the action was organized by members of the unregistered Democratic Party.
“We are talking about the creation of a second republic, about New Kazakhstan, but they continue to celebrate the birthday of the authoritarian dictator Nursultan Nazarbayev. We made this day a day off!” Inga Imanbai, the wife of Zhanbolat Mamai, said at the rally.
Literally at the same moment, employees of the prosecutor’s office, accompanied by police, approached the protesters with a call to stop the unsanctioned rally. However, in response, they began to chant the demand – “Put Nazarbayev in jail. Release Zhanbolat Mamai. Three minutes later, four buses of riot police drove up to the protesters. All protesters were detained. They were loaded into a bus and taken to the district police station. So, 10 minutes after the start of the rally, everything was over.
