On November 23, at a Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) meeting of heads of state in Minsk, President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev said the military alliance should focus on the fight against terrorism and extremism. From January 1, Kazakhstan will take over the rotating chairmanship of the CSTO for one year. Armenia, a CSTO member, did not participate in the meeting.
A fire broke out in the north-eastern Abai region, killing at least 15 and causing the loss of dozens of thousands of hectares of forest area. It took days for emergency workers to extinguish the fire. President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev dismissed the minister of emergency situations Yuri Ilyn and the deputy prosecutor general said that Ilyn, together with the minister of ecology and the regional governor, will be among those who will be summoned to court within the framework of a criminal investigation regarding the fire.
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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.