Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev accepted the government’s resignation on Wednesday (5 January), his office said, after a fuel price increase in the oil-rich Central Asian country triggered protests in which nearly 100 police were injured.
Police used tear gas and stun grenades late on Tuesday to drive hundreds of protesters out of the main square in Almaty, the former Soviet republic’s biggest city, and clashes went on for hours in nearby areas.
The protests shook the former Soviet republic’s image as a politically stable and tightly controlled country, which it has used to attract hundreds of billions of dollars of foreign investment in its oil and metals industries over three decades of independence.
#Kazakhstan
▶️ Protests against the rise of fuel price started on January 2.
▶️ Dozens of thousands have been protesting in at least 10 cities.
▶️ The Internet is disrupted.
▶️ Tokayev asked people to calm down and promised to consider their demands at the meeting tomorrow pic.twitter.com/BniE8DicQ9— Hanna Liubakova (@HannaLiubakova) January 4, 2022
Speaking to acting cabinet members, Tokayev ordered them and provincial governors to reinstate LPG price controls and broaden them to gasoline, diesel and other “socially important” consumer goods.
He also ordered the government to develop a personal bankruptcy law and consider freezing utilities’ prices and subsidising rent payments for poor families.
He said the situation was improving in protest-hit cities and towns after the state of emergency was declared which included a curfew and movement restrictions.
The protests began in the the oil-producing western province of Mangistau on Sunday following the lifting of price caps on liquefied petroleum gas, a popular car fuel, a day earlier, after which its price more than doubled.
Many Kazakhs have converted their cars to run on LPG, which is far cheaper than gasoline as a vehicle fuel in Kazakhstan because of price caps. But the government argued that the low price was unsustainable and lifted the caps on 1 January. On Tuesday evening, the government announced it was restoring the price cap of 50 tenge (11 cents) per litre, or less than half the market price, in Mangistau province.
It appears a massive crowd is moving toward downtown Almaty in Kazakhstan. Please correct me if I am wrong but this seems unprecedented for Almaty. pic.twitter.com/0DFgVIbzKp
— Bakhti Nishanov (@b_nishanov) January 4, 2022
Tokayev declared the emergency in Almaty and Mangistau and has said that domestic and foreign provocateurs were behind the violence.
Separately, the interior ministry said that in addition to Almaty, government buildings were attacked in the southern cities of Shymkent and Taraz overnight, with 95 police officers wounded in clashes. Police have detained more than 200 people.
Almaty mayor Bakytzhan Sagintayev said in an address to residents that the situation in the city was under control and security forces were detaining “provocateurs and extremists”.
