Issue and opponent: In the years before the first election in 2005, President Nazarbayev’s government’s repression of public demonstrations was very strict, especially against human rights activists and the media. The attacks on the media were mild at first, masking some unknown private criminal activity as the government did not want to risk attacking the media openly. In 2003, Sergey Duvanov, who wrote some articles evidencing government oppression, was staged as raping a teenage girl and he could not prove himself innocent in court. Some people believed in Duvanov’s guilt and the journalist was not able to recover his reputation. In 2009 a similar case against Duvanov’s defender and a famous human rights lawyer Evgeny Zhovtis was staged – Zhovtis had a road accident and killed a pedestrian – the case was staged so skillfully that Zhovtis believed in his guilt and could not defend himself properly.
Dilemma Action: In 2009, protesters decided to walk randomly, to avoid detention, around the city of Almaty with umbrellas, posters, and banners with Sergey Duvanov’s name on them. They wanted to show their support of Duvanov and his criticism of the non-observance of political rights by the government of Kazakhstan. The same happened with the case of Zhovtis, people showed his support with banners and posters with his name, expressing their disagreement with his unjustified arrest.
Outcome: Despite the absence of an administrative offense, the police detained all participants. Some were sentenced to pay fines for protesting without the permits required by the government. Almaty was the center of the protest but it was futile too as the capital moved to Astana, a fortress at that time that seemed to be immune to any local sentiment. By 2008, political protests were replaced with economic grievances which somehow went down different pathways – political protests of the early 2000s were urban, intellectual, and Almaty-centered while economic protests had a different base – lower income, rural to city Kazakh-speaking migrants. But Almaty protesters, creative, intellectual, Russian speaking, wealthy that drive the early 2000s opposition wave somehow disappeared from the protesting base.