In an interview to the Russian newspaper Tribuna a month ago, Kazakhstan’s president Nursultan Nazarbayev assured that the popular uprisings that shook Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan were inconceivable in economically and politically stable Kazakhstan. But his daughter, the leader of the Asar party and member of parliament Dariga Nazarbayeva sounded conspicuously less optimistic when, speaking at the party Congress of Asar, said the repetition of “colored revolution” scenario was possible in Kazakhstan. But, in her words, popular unrest in Kazakhstan may be triggered off not by the poverty of population or by some other economic reasons, but by the passivity of pro-presidential parties in the face of the danger of “export of democracy” to Kazakhstan by outside forces, assisted by “inner destructive forces”. Dariga Nazarbayeva also announced that the Democratic Party of Kazakhstan and the Asar party created a new political bloc and a coalition, “The union of Kazakhstan’s people for democracy”.

It is evident to the naked eye that the call for consolidation of “democratic” forces is motivated by concerns of mobilizing pro-presidential parties against the opposition ahead of presidential elections. The right moment is chosen to achieve this purpose. Following the split within the Communist party and the banning of the Democratic Choice of Kazakhstan, the main remaining opposition party Ak Zhol split into two rivaling factions. However, the most influential opposition blocs united under the wing of For Fair Kazakhstan movement has great potential for winning a large electorate and receiving public support in the run-up to the presidential elections. On May 22, leaders of democratic movement, independent journalists and civic rights activists staged a meeting in Almaty in protest of the forced closure of the Respublika newspaper, an unsubstantiated 5 million tenge ($37,600) fine imposed on the independent Soz paper, and the legal persecution of the Zhuma-Taims weekly.

A few days after that meeting, on June 2, Batyrkhan Darimbet, one of the active participants, founder of the Azat newspaper and a former journalist with the Kazakh service of Radio Liberty became the victim of a car accident near Taraz (South Kazakhstan). He died in hospital on June 7 after he was operated for a back injury. As in many other previous mysterious road accidents involving opposition journalists, the circumstances of the incident still remain unclear. Reportedly, Darimbet had to travel to Taraz to set up local branches of the Alga, DVK! (Forvard, Democratic Choice of Kazakhstan!) opposition movement. In November 2002, the prominent journalist Nuri Muftakh, who worked with Batyrkhan Darimbet for the Azat paper and a number of other opposition media outlets, was killed by a bus in Shymkent. Since that time, three journalists have been killed in road accidents.

Beatings and intimidation of journalists by the police and persecutions have become commonplace to the extent that recently journalists from Pavlodar (North Kazakhstan) appealed to the regional chief of police Murat Tumarbekov demanding legal protection from police harassment. They complained that over the past few months, 10 journalists were unlawfully detained, subjected to humiliation and beaten by the police, obviously for running articles critical of local authorities.

This tactic of intimidation is likely to be used extensively in coming months as political developments in the country enter the pre-election phase. The tough attitude to press freedom and civic rights and the fear of losing the reigns of politics is what really unites the communist-era leaders of Central Asian states. Nursultan Nazarbayev, amid the public protests over the events in Andijan, stopped short of condemning the brutalities in the Uzbek town. The foreign minister of Tajikistan, Talbak Nazarov, who came to Astana to attend the meeting of foreign ministers of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, actually echoed Nazarbayev’s ostentatious optimism, saying that a colored revolution in Tajikistan is unimaginable. Ironically, his words were uttered at the moment when international human rights organizations were clamoring for the release of the jailed independent journalist Jumobay Tolibov.

The grim prospect of the spread of public uprisings in Central Asia compels authoritarian leaders to verbal solidarity. But unity is something badly needed to consolidate the opposition movement in Kazakhstan. The opposition is weakened not only by factional strife within political factions, but also, most ominously, along Russian-Kazakh ethnic lines. The regime tries to use this situation to its own ends playing off the growing sentiment of national-patriotism among Kazakh opposition against the Slavic “cosmopolitism”. So far, the tactic of sowing dissent in the ranks of the opposition seems to work.