CHURCH leaders in Kazakhstan have backed anti-protest measures by the government of President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, after bloody riots left 225 people dead and more than 4300 injured, mostly in the country’s largest city, Almaty.
“We already see good results in restoring security and constitutional order, testifying to the correctness and relevance of the President’s position,” the Russian Orthodox Metropolitan Alexander Mogilev of Kazakhstan said in a website message.
“Extremists have used the cruellest means to intimidate people, forcing them to fulfil their vicious will, undermining the principles of good neighbourliness and tolerance, and destroying state sovereignty. . . These cynical atrocities, committed during the holy days of Christmas, require strong condemnation, comprehensive opposition and an urgent strengthening of co-operation by the entire world community in countering terrorism.”
The message was published as order was reimposed after the riots, sparked by fuel-price rises, which were the worst since the mineral-rich country, situated between Russia and China, seceded from the Soviet Union in 1991.
Metropolitan Alexander said that President Tokayev had taken a “wise and timely decision” to summon help from Russia and other states belonging to the region’s Moscow-led Collective Security Treaty Organisation, and urged “healthy forces in society” to “rally around” the head of state, who took office in March 2019.
A bishop in Kazakhstan’s small Roman Catholic Church described the crisis as a “power struggle”, and criticised “distorted reporting” of recent events. “Some foreign media coverage gave the impression that soldiers from an oppressive regime had shot ruthlessly at peaceful demonstrators— this is simply not true,” the Almaty-based Bishop José Luís Mumbiela told the Germany news agency Kathpress.
“Ordinary people came to these demonstrations, but more and more armed people, some from abroad, then joined them. They weren’t interested in peacefully protesting rising energy costs — they wanted something else. And they didn’t come with sticks and stones, but were well equipped with modern weapons.”
In a statement last weekend, the Kazakh Prosecutor-General’s office said that 16 security officers had been among the 225 confirmed deaths, while law enforcers also accounted for most injuries. They said that 672 rioters remained behind bars, mainly in the south and west.
Addressing regional leaders by video last week, after dispatching up to 5000 Russian troops to the country, President Putin said that mostly Muslim Kazakhstan had been targeted by “well organised and clearly managed groups of militants”, some trained in “terrorist camps abroad”, and that Russia would “never allow revolutions in the region”.
President Tokayev branded the unrest an attempted coup, and imposed a nationwide overnight curfew and ban on gatherings, reinforcing the National Guard and Interior Ministry special units, and announcing “systemic measures” to “counter religious extremism and firmly prevent its merger with criminality”.
The Russian news agency Interfax reported that churches and mosques, along with cinemas and theatres, remained closed in Almaty, ostensibly because of coronavirus fears. The secretary-general of Kazakhstan’s RC Bishops’ Conference said that he was not aware of any “acts of aggression” against places of worship.
“There’s a group of very rich people in Kazakhstan, but also a very large segment living at the social minimum,” the priest, Fr Petr Pytlovani, told the Church Times.
“Kazakhstan’s image as an oasis of peace and stability, with no disorder, has now been wrecked. But the country could still have a bright future if political stability is restored and its autonomous development protected.”
In a message last week to Kazakhstan’s new Prime Minister, Alikhan Smailov, Metropolitan Alexander said that the Orthodox Church, which makes up one fifth of the country’s 17 million inhabitants, would remain “active in strengthening peace and harmony”, while “preserving and increasing society’s spiritual values”.
Meeting the ambassador of Belarus on Monday, he said that Kazakhs had succeeded in “building a democratic society, developing the social sphere and creating an economic system”, as well as in asserting religious freedom and gaining worldwide authority “as a model of peaceful inter-ethnic and interreligious harmony”.
