This unaltered story [1] was originally published on OpenDemocracy.org. License [2]: Creative Commons 4.0 - Attributions/No Derivities/Int'l. ------------------------ Reporting on Kazakhstan’s chaos amid internet shutdowns and violence By: [] Date: 2022-01 “I’m no longer editor-in-chief at Ak Zhaik,” Azamat Maitanov said meekly, his heavy heart evident, during a phone interview on 10 January. Maitanov had already been under pressure from the Kazakhstani authorities for the past year over his stewardship of the newspaper, based in the west of the country, and he was looking to a break visiting family abroad for the holidays. In December, he left his hometown of Atyrau, in the Caspian region. He doesn’t know when it will be safe for him to go back. Protests that started over a fuel price increase in the western regions of Kazakhstan were picked up in towns and cities across the country, but later turned into urban violence in the city of Almaty, home to two million residents. The clashes between rioters, looters and law enforcement on 5 and 6 January represented the most violent and deadly events in the history of Kazakhstan. Ak Zhaik had been at the frontline of the protest. The newspaper’s correspondents monitored the situation in Atyrau, as well as in the nearby giant oil field of Tengiz, and the Soviet-era monotowns that were built to house oil workers at the mouth of the Ural river (in Kazakh, “Ak Zhaiyk”). “It’s time for me to leave, with pride in my work and the work of my colleagues. But I worry for them now,” Maitanov said. Get our free Daily Email Get one whole story, direct to your inbox every weekday. Sign up now Indeed, previous episodes of protest in Kazakhstan give Maitanov reason for concern. In 2016, during large-scale protests in Atyrau over a proposed land reform, Ak Zhaik journalists reported from the town’s central square. In the days after the rally, the same journalists were individually brought in for questioning by the security services, Maitanov recalled. For years, press freedom watchdogs have highlighted government pressure against Kazakhstan’s media. From Almaty, Miras Nurmukhanbetov, vice president of Adil Soz, the international fund for the defense of freedom of speech, told openDemocracy that “journalism and, in general, freedom of speech in Kazakhstan have gone through hard times before, but now the situation has become even more aggravated.” But now, after the clashes in Almaty and the backlash against journalists across the country, Maitanov expects the worst. “I would not be surprised if [the pressure] were worse this time. [Journalists] might be intimidated, arrested. The situation of media will not be good going forward,” he said. Internet blackout “As I write these words, we have no internet in the city. I don’t know who is running the country. But I do know there has been a lot of violence. And it looks like there will be more,” wrote Daniyar Moldabekov, a journalist working for independent news site Vlast.kz in Almaty, in one of the first English-language dispatches out of the country on 6 January. Moldabekov’s powerful reporting from Almaty, which had been rocked by violence overnight, set the tone for much of what was to come. [END] [1] Url: https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/odr/kazakhstan-chaos-amid-internet-shutdowns-violence/ [2] url: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/ OpenDemocracy via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/opendemocracy/