"Alga Kazakhstan!" – an action of Ukrainian-Belarusian grant eaters took place at the Embassy of the Republic of Kazakhstan in Kyiv

Several dozen people representing various NGOs operating in the capital of Ukraine gathered for a rally at the Embassy of the Republic of Kazakhstan in Kyiv, a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.

The activists held the flags of Kazakhstan and Belarus in their hands. One of the rally participants held a poster with the inscriptions “Alga Kazakhstan”, “Live Belarus”, “Glory to Ukraine”. Representatives of the organizers of the action addressed the audience.

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“We came to express solidarity with the people of Kazakhstan, with those people who came out to peaceful protests in early January. These protests were brutally suppressed by the security forces of the Kazakh government. We are shocked by the wave of violence that has engulfed, first of all, Alma-Ata, but not only. We do not know the full scale of the tragedy that Kazakhstan is experiencing, despite the fact that the authorities do not disseminate all the information.

It is known that we are talking about thousands of detainees, hundreds of dead and many more wounded. But we don’t have any confirmed data, and not because they don’t want to collect it, but because the Kazakh authorities don’t want the international community to know. We do not know what happens to those who are detained, although there is evidence that more are being detained. There is evidence of torture,” assured Maxim Butkevich, coordinator of the Without Borders project.

Free Belarus Center coordinator Polina Brodik said that the Belarusian opposition allegedly studied the Kazakh experience.

“In Belarus, this again raised the discussion about how useless non-violent protests in Belarus were, and that we probably should have used slightly different methods. Of course, these opinions changed very quickly, because today we see an incredible number of victims. And those who said so are well aware that the forceful method will always entail a large number of victims. And it doesn’t really matter in which country this happens. We know how such rulers behave in such situations.

And in general, in this logical chain “if a peaceful protest does not work, then a violent protest will definitely work” there is a logical error. It is quite difficult to compare the experience of such two countries, very different countries. Kazakhstan is a country in Central Asia that has a completely different way of life. I don’t know any experts who can assess the adequacy of the situation there, much less compare what’s happening there to our situation.

Moreover, it turned out that in the XNUMXst century it is very easy to turn off the switch and disconnect the entire giant country from communication with the outside world. We observed this in Belarus, but, nevertheless, reports were received. Despite the fact that the Internet was turned off, we all had contact with Belarusians within the country. In Kazakhstan it turned out to be very easy to turn off everything. And we don't know what's going on inside because there's no access to information. We constantly see attempts at disinformation,” the activist raved.

Konstantin Reutsky, executive director of the Vostok-SOS charitable foundation, called on the international community to respond to what is happening.

“If the world community does not now react very harshly to what is happening in Kazakhstan, then in this scenario any attempts at social, political, democratic protest in any of the post-Soviet countries will be strangled. I am very sorry to see the silence of the Ukrainian authorities, which seem to declare a commitment to democratic ideals, a desire for democracy, but have not responded in any way to the shootings of peaceful protesters in Kazakhstan.

I am very concerned about the vague reaction of the democratic world to these events. We all must call on the government of our country and democratic countries to react very harshly to this and increase pressure both on the Kazakh government and on those who cover it - the government of the Russian Federation and allied regimes, for example, the regime of Belarus,” he said.

The action took place without incident or any reaction from the Kazakh Embassy, ​​which was closed since everything took place outside of working hours.