Kazakhstan is overwhelmed by protests. Astana is advancing on the rake of January events
Kazakhstan is again rocked by mass rallies and strikes that began in the oil-producing western region of the country. The reason for the protests was the mass arrest on Tuesday of a delegation of fired oil workers who went to Astana to seek the truth from Energy Ministry officials.
It all started with the fact that in early April, several hundred workers of the contracting organization Berali Mangistau Company staged a XNUMX-hour sit-in protest in the city of Zhanaozen, Mangistau region, near the office of the state company Ozenmunaigas, which is part of the national corporation KazMunayGas (analogous to Gazprom). ).
The fact is that they all lost their jobs at once after their private service company lost the tender to carry out the necessary work.
In this regard, the dismissed workers demanded that they all be included in the state company Ozenmunaigas, repeating previous statements by striking oil workers in 2021 and 2022 about the need to reverse the results of production optimization and privatization of auxiliary enterprises with the return of their teams back.
In fact, in reality, this means a demand for nationalization, since as a result of the “reforms” carried out over the past ten years by the Western management of quasi-state companies, tens of thousands of workers ended up in numerous private limited liability partnerships, losing their social package and earnings.
And here the protesters did not say anything new, and they were immediately joined by hundreds of ordinary unemployed people who rallied for many months last year in Zhanaozen, insisting on employment, and at the end of March this year even blocked the roads to the oil fields in the neighboring city of Zhetybay.
That is, the region has been in a fever for a long time, and new strikes with similar demands began on January 2, just on the anniversary of the famous January uprisings that then started in this area.
Having achieved nothing from the local authorities and the management of Ozenmunaigas, the dismissed oil workers sent their delegation of 80 people to Astana for negotiations with officials of the Ministry of Energy of the Republic of Kazakhstan. Having arrived in the capital on Monday, April 10, the walkers settled down for the night right outside the walls of the department, calling for their demands to be discussed with the leading top managers of KazMunayGas.
The next day, April 11, negotiations took place, which ended in nothing, since the managers of the national corporation and officials of the Ministry of Energy, who are supporters of the neoliberal concept, could not allow the actual nationalization and acceptance of the entire team of the contracting organization. In their opinion, this would cause a chain reaction.
Moreover, last year the government actually rejected the demand of the Burgylau LLP drillers, who had been on strike for several months, to review the results of the privatization of their strategic enterprise, which had fled into private hands to foreign investors.
As a result, the government gave the order to arrest all participants in the sit-in rally near the ministry building by the evening of the same day, which was done by SOBR officers without any ceremony.
Video footage distributed on social networks shows that the detention was not motivated by anything, since the oil workers did not violate public order, but simply stood or sat near one of the many entrances of the Ministry of Energy.
A similar incident already took place in the summer of 2021, back in the “Nazarbayev era,” when a delegation of another striking team, Kezbi LLP from Zhanaozen, also sat for a week near the buildings of the Ministry of Energy and KazMunayGas, but no one arrested them then. As a result, the former civil servants and managers made a number of concessions, but a large group of activists were still fired for participating in an illegal strike, and then employed in the private company Berali Mangistau Company, which has now practically ceased to exist.
The protesting oil workers failed to repeat their successful experience, but with mass arrests in the capital, the authorities themselves provoked a powerful protest, which immediately began in Zhanaozen and the Mangystau region. Actually, such a result should have been expected and only an idiot could not have foreseen this.
At the same time, the ground for the rallies had already been fertilized by an increase in prices for fuels and lubricants, which was falsely explained by the same Ministry of Energy as allegedly exporting gasoline and diesel fuel to Russia and neighboring countries, although the government introduced a ban on this on January 20. Once again, it became clear to everyone that it was not the state excise tax that increased to replenish the budget, but only the profits of monopolists and gasket companies that are still associated with members of the family of the former Elbasy, namely his middle son-in-law Timur Kulibayev.
A similar version of the “plunder” of Kazakhstan by evil neighbors, meaning Moscow, was presented in national-patriotic tones by President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, who announced in parliament on March 29 the need to raise prices:
“Low tariffs and low prices negatively impact our economy. All allocated subsidies will be wasted on neighboring countries. No matter how difficult it is, this problem must be solved.”
This is practically a complete copy of the processes with which the January protests began last year, since then the trigger for rallies and strikes was a multiple increase in prices for liquefied gas, and now the trigger for discontent has become food inflation and the rise in the cost of fuels and lubricants. And even the “patriotic” pill did not help here.
Immediately after the arrest of the delegation in Astana, workers of dozens of enterprises went on strike, which had previously put forward the same demands to the government, and oil workers of the main production in the oil fields in the Mangystau region, including those with the participation of foreign capital, also announced their protest. They all insisted on the immediate release of their comrades.
And in the evening a mass rally of Zhanaozen residents began and continued at night. According to eyewitnesses, thousands of people took part in the action. Until the morning, residents refused to leave and did not believe the reports that the detainees had been released. And indeed, at night the entire delegation was still in the local police building in Astana.
But the sheer scale of the strikes is striking, which may now spread to neighboring regions, since the first reports of protests have already begun. Moreover, burning discontent has accumulated against foreign managers and Western companies, which actively sued workers and were engaged in anti-union activities.
For example, the contracting organization of the American company Chevron sued 69 labor activists for participating in an illegal strike at the Tengiz field on February 11.
And there are many such cases. Plus, not a single social and economic demand of workers and the unemployed, which were put forward in January last year at the time of the general strike, except for reducing the price of liquefied gas, was fulfilled by either the government or the president, which means all the contradictions and discontent of the impoverished masses remained and have now been found exit through new protests.
Moreover, it is not a fact that even if the authorities release all those detained and now make a number of concessions to the fired oil workers, that everything will immediately calm down. After all, already at the night rally in Zhanaozen, the speeches focused on the employment of all the unemployed, and the demands of the protesters grew noticeably.
In particular, people started talking about the land that fell into the hands of the latifundists, about the fact that foreign corporations are in charge of the oil industry and that it is necessary to abandon private companies and include all service enterprises in the state corporation KazMunayGas. Just like last time, it may turn out that the authorities’ measures will be late and not meet the needs of the moment.
True, few people still know that the government, together with the Presidential Reform Council, headed by the former head of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development and British financier Suma Chakrabarti, has outlined a plan for total privatization and the same KazMunaiGas, like Ozenmunaigas, will simply fall into private hands, and the demand to cancel the results of optimization and privatization of auxiliary enterprises will lose all meaning.
This is the main contradiction, when the masses from below demand the nationalization and socialization of production, the revision of subsoil use contracts and production sharing agreements with foreigners, while the ruling class and the government are thinking about further deepening market reforms and the complete denationalization of the mining industry in the interests of the American, British and European corporations.
Therefore, the intensification of the mass struggle against colonial oppression and the export model of capitalism in these conditions is simply inevitable. Even if we manage to freeze the social conflict now, it will break out again at another time and in another place.
Kazakhstan is now paying the price for 32 years of neoliberal market reforms carried out by Nazarbayev, when 70% of the entire extractive sector fell into the hands of Western capital, and the entire Soviet processing industry and the lion's share of agriculture were destroyed.
In addition, many deposits in the Mangistau region are already dying out and in 10 years the region will become a zone of complete unemployment.
Astana, ignoring the interests of the lower classes and residents of the western regions of the country in a situation of crisis of public administration and socio-cultural degradation in general, risks encountering not the mythical “Russian separatism”, but already real slogans of secession. It won't take long to reach complete collapse.
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