This is not a #Maidan, although many political analysts are trying to present it this way. Where did such amazing #self-organization come from? This is the experience and tradition of the workers. Strikes have been shaking the #Mangistau region since 2008, and the strike movement began back in the 2000s. Even without any input from the #Communist Party or other leftist groups, there were constant demands to nationalize the oil companies. The workers simply saw with their own eyes what privatization and foreign capitalist takeover was leading to. In the course of these earlier demonstrations, they gained enormous experience in struggle and #solidarity. The very life in the wilderness made people stick together. It was against this background that the working class and the rest of the population came together. The protests of the workers in #Zhanoazen and #Aktau then set the tone for other regions of the country. Yurts and tents, which protesters began to put up in the main squares of the cities, were not at all taken from the “Euromaidan” experience: they stood in the Mangastau Region during the local strikes last year. The population itself brought water and food for the protesters.
In Kazakhstan today there is no legal #opposition, the entire political field has been cleared. The Communist Party of #Kazakhstan was the last to be liquidated in 2015. Only 7 pro-governmental parties remained. But there are plenty of #NGOs working in the country, which actively cooperate with the authorities in promoting a pro-Western agenda. Their favorite topics: the famine of the 1930s, the rehabilitation of participants of the Basmachi movement and collaborators of World War II, and so on. NGOs also work on the development of nationalist movement, which in Kazakhstan is completely pro-government. Nationalists hold rallies against #China and #Russia which are sanctioned by the authorities.

https://lefteast.org/a-color-revolution-or-a-working-class-uprising-an-interview-with-aynur-kurmanov-on-the-protests-in-kazakhstan/ #uprising #left #work #strike #islamism #nationalism #takayev #belarus #armennia