Kazakhstan: Human rights activists demand that the President be held accountable for the January tragedy

The Center for Investigation of the January events in Kazakhstan is collecting documents and evidence from detainees and relatives who were killed during the January rallies. Members of the Center, headed by Zhasaral Kuanyshalin, travel to the cities where the riots took place and meet with eyewitnesses of those events and victims.

According to Kuanyshalin, the purpose of these meetings is simple – to collect information about what happened, to get information about the killed, arrested and tortured citizens.

“Our main goal is to report this to foreign countries, to raise this issue to the international level, because the law is not observed inside Kazakhstan. All this is due to lawlessness. At the very beginning, as you all know, the President gave permission to shoot to kill. By his order, so many innocent people were shot! According to them, there were 227 people. This is official data. But we think that there were many more victims than this number. We are making efforts to investigate all this,” Kuanyshalin said at the meeting in Ust-Kamenogorsk.

He also spoke specifically about detainees being tortured.

“You know that tortures, which have not been used before, are being carried out. They are bloodcurdling… such as dousing with hot boiling water, cauterizing with an iron… These are incomprehensible things to the human mind! Now we need to release all the prisoners, bring all employees of the authorities, who did illegal things, to justice! It doesn’t have to be hidden. Tokayev also needs to be held accountable, because everything comes from him!” said the head of the Center.

Meanwhile, as reported by the Prosecutor General’s Office of Kazakhstan, to date, 56 people with bodily injuries, who were detained during the riots, are at the pre-trial detention center.

“Today, 669 such persons are in custody in the pre-trial detention center, including 56 with bodily injuries. Of these, 52 currently don’t need treatment, 4 of them continue to receive treatment in the medical unit of the pre-trial detention center,” said Prosecutor General Berik Asylov.

As ACCA previously reported, 203 pre-trial investigations have been launched into cases of torture and abuse of power against detainees during the January events. Nine of them, including those on the death of detainees as a result of torture, are being investigated. Another 194 cases are being processed by the Anti-Corruption Agency.