More than 100 protesters were detained in the capital Astana and in the western oil town of Zhanaozen on April 11 and 12 in relation to an oil worker protest. The workers had just been laid off by an oil service company that had lost a tender with the state-owned enterprise. They had traveled to Astana to speak to the ministry of energy and state-owned Kazmunaigas, but were only met by three deputies, a few mid-level officials, and hundreds of special police forces. After a few hours of detention, they were sent back to Zhanaozen on a special train. One Vlast photojournalist in Astana was detained for an hour and during the mass detentions a balaclava-clad policeman almost forced the work phone off another of our correspondents’ hands.
Ilyas Userov, deputy mayor of Kazakhstan's city Almaty, said that total damage from recent violent protests reached an estimated 112 billion Kazakhstani tenge ($260 million).