The oil-rich country located in Central Asia has been the scene of massive protests in the last few days.
Thousands of demonstrators took to the streets and the situation soon escalated into riots of unprecedented levels.
Police and military were unable to stop the angry crowd, so what’s going on in Kazakhstan?
Kazakhstan, a Central Asian nation of about 19 million people is not a country where protests happen often.
But last Sunday on January 2, several hundred people took to the streets in Zhanaozen, a city located in western Kazakhstan, to protest against high gas (LPG) prices. The price went from about 12-14 U.S. cents at the end of 2021, to 28 cents in the new year.
The protests soon spread to the rest of the country, the largest the country has seen since it gained independence on December 16, 1991. Thousands of people also started taking part in the protests in the former capital of Almaty.
But what started as a protest against rising fuel prices quickly grew into a expression of general dissatisfaction with the government, because even after the announcement on Tuesday that the fuel prices were to be lowered again the protests did not stop.
Even after President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev announced the resignation from his cabinet last Wednesday, it did not appear that the population was satisfied with this.