The natural rights behind Kazakhstan protests

A global trend toward autocratic rule was defied by a mass, unplanned protest asserting civic rights in the Central Asian country.

The Monitor's View

A global narrative that contends more people prefer to give up their rights in favor of authoritarian rule got shot down last week in Kazakhstan, the world’s ninth-largest country by area. To the shock of dictators in neighboring China and Russia, tens of thousands of Kazakhs took to the streets in spontaneous protests starting Jan. 2. At first the outcry was over a nearly doubling of fuel prices for vehicles. But protesters quickly began to demand equal opportunity in business and politics.

One democracy activist, Galymzhan Zhakiyanov, called the protests an assertion of “natural rights” that reside in each individual over the claim that political power lies in the few. Kazakhstan is a virtual one-party state with the elite battling over resources.

“Our citizens, as in any civilized states, had the right to express their opinions and protests if the authorities do not hear them,” Mr. Zhakiyanov told independent news site kz.media.

While the protests have since been repressed – with the aid of Russian troops – Kazakhstan now joins a string of former Soviet states that have had either a successful or an incomplete democratic “color revolution” since Georgia’s 2003 Rose Revolution. These include Armenia’s 2018 revolution and the ongoing dissent in Belarus following peaceful protests in 2020.

Moscow’s surprise at the Kazakhstan protests may add to its efforts to roll back Ukraine’s 2004 Orange Revolution and 2014 Maidan revolution. Those popular upwellings for individual rights are still pushing Ukraine to join Western democracies, such as membership in the European Union.

Dictators are usually so isolated they don’t notice grassroots stirrings to assert individual dignity and equality, especially in people’s daily struggle against official corruption. Transparency International reported in 2019 that 1 in 5 entrepreneurs in Kazakhstan encountered corruption when applying to start a business. Last year, the government of President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev admitted that the pandemic has exposed “chronic” corruption in official bodies.

Since Kazakhstan’s independence in 1991, the country’s elite rulers, starting with Nursultan Nazarbayev (“Leader of the Nation”), have failed to suppress a vibrant civil society and independent media on the internet. Protest activity in Kazakhstan has been rising since 2018, according to the Oxus Society for Central Asian Affairs.

One reason, according to journalist Sher Khashimov and researcher Raushan Zhandayeva, writing in Foreign Policy last July: “Scores of people across Kazakhstan have turned to YouTube, Telegram, and Instagram in the past five years to conduct journalistic investigations, discuss and analyze events in the country, report on political protests ignored by pro-government media, and push against the government’s narrative.”

The internet has allowed citizens in former Soviet states to easily follow the democratic progress in other countries. “Young, internet savvy Kazakhs ... likely want similar freedoms as Ukrainians, Georgians, Moldovans, Kyrgyz and Armenians,” Timothy Ash, a strategist at BlueBay Asset Management, told the Euractiv media network.

During last week’s protests, one popular chant was “Forward, Kazakhstan.” It was a sign of just how much the people of that Central Asian country see progress toward freedom as not only possible but also a natural right.