Our country then faced the threat of sliding into chaos and anarchy. It was literally a matter of minutes. Without any exaggeration, the preservation of our statehood was at stake,” he wrote, expressing high hopes for the continued democratization processes. We have his desk diary with that day, 9/11 2001, circled. It was his first day in office and it simply says, ‘Begin today at Palais Wilson’, and it’s a remarkable document, something so banal, so plain, a simple desk diary, and yet it records a link to an event that shaped the world.” According to Asylov, 329 criminal cases involving torture have been filed based on citizen complaints. Cases of torture of 27 individuals in Almaty region’s police stations and temporary detention facilities are now in court. By the next day, the predominately male crowd had swelled to several thousand, steel workers joining the delivery drivers and others. “Every hour there were more people,” Zhanagul remembered.

In a subsequent report , Human Rights Watch said that Kazakhstani authorities “arbitrarily arrested peaceful protesters and others, ill-treated and tortured some detainees, and interfered with detainees’ access to lawyers” after the January unrest. Some were arrested before the violence escalated, and others seemingly detained for livestreaming the protests.When he was a student studying moral philosophy at Glasgow University Alan Parks met another student, called Lloyd. Lloyd was a wannabe musician. Another mutual friend, Derek, offered to manage Lloyd. In Aktobe, officials reported that 62 people were hospitalized with various injuries, including a dozen law enforcement officers. Authorities at the time bragged that the “rallies ended without bloodshed,” but concealed the death of Zhubanazarov, whose body was not returned to his family until a month later. About a thousand people were taken into police custody and questioned.

He went on to become professor and director of the Human Rights Centre at the University of Essex, and died in 2010. While Tokayev has presented a vision of a country that is democratizing and providing more economic opportunity to its citizens, the legacy of Nazarbayev’s authoritarian rule looms large. “If you go deeper, many reforms are cosmetic or very small. It’s still a super-presidential system with lots of control in the hands of the president,” said Abramov. “There will be positive changes. But I’m absolutely sure it’s not enough for Kazakhstan.” When the air, so recently filled with smoke from grenades and bullets, both rubber and real, cleared, reporters were the ones pressing the government for a full accounting of the 238 people killed, more than 4,500 injured, around 10,000 detained, and several hundred reportedly tortured.As one Almaty resident told RFE/RL : “There were innocent people that were shot dead — for example, someone going to the pharmacy in the evening, or visiting a relative in an emergency.”

I think that Nazarbayev’s circles have been involved in this. The provocateurs deliberately made a bloody massacre and chaos out of a peaceful rally. The police did not use weapons at first, no one knew that there would be provocateurs. We have a police force, an army, the KNB, so we should feel safe, but we saw something else. The question is: What was all this for? I think to seize power. They fight among themselves for power, and ordinary people suffer.” Public uproar ensured that some detainees, Kiysimbayev among them, were released from pre-trial detention.Following the unrest, as many as 12,000 people were arrested. Many have been released, though the Kazakhstani authorities have filed thousands of administrative charges (for mass protests, for example) and more than 2,000 criminal cases. Hundreds remain detained. Those journalists who were loyal to the government and wrote that things were normal and calm, they were not taken into the police station,” Dmtry said.