On Wednesday evening, at the end of a chaotic day when public buildings were stormed by demonstrators across the country, the Kazakh authorities had prepared public opinion for the fierce repression carried out on Thursday.
Police in Almaty, the economic capital of the former Soviet Republic, had warned that they would launch a "
counterterrorism operation"
.
The expression was as improper as expected, while the movement, which admittedly gave rise to some looting, had started three days earlier in the oil west of the country, to protest against the sudden and drastic increase in the price of oil. 'a fuel widely used in the immense Kazakh steppe, liquefied petroleum gas.
Two thousand arrests
This increase fueled an unbearable general inflation for the
mambetter
, the rural youth who grew up in the steppe and are internal migrants, as for the
oralmandar
, Kazakh returnees whose ancestors had fled to China, Mongolia or Turkmenistan ...
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