QARAGHANDY, Kazakhstan -- In the main hall of a building belonging to the local affiliate of global steel giant ArcelorMittal, women shook and shrieked in grief as young men sat numbly slumped over the backs of chairs.
They were holding out for news of their loved ones and colleagues following the largest industrial accident in Kazakhstan's independent history at one of the company's coal mines in the east-central Qaraghandy Province.
"I came for news about my nephew," a man told RFE/RL's Kazakh Service. Another, wearing a haunted expression, was seeking news about his colleagues.
He worked at the Kostenko mine, where the methane-gas explosion took place, he explained, but was on holiday on October 28, when more than 200 miners were caught underground.
By the morning of October 29 -- declared a day of national mourning by the government -- many of those still camped at the company's office waiting for updates were "hoping to the last," as one woman said, but already fearing the worst.
The eventual death toll reached 46 people, with smaller numbers injured, making it worse than the second-largest accident under ArcelorMittal's stewardship -- a mine disaster that left 41 dead in 2006.
The end of an investment relationship that began in the mid-1990s had seemed inevitable at least since the most recent mine accident in August, in which five workers died.
But in the wake of the blast that resulted in nearly 200 fatalities during ArcelorMittal Temirtau's ownership, the parting of ways was confirmed in the worst of circumstances.
Speaking to ArcelorMittal employees and grieving families of miners killed in the tragedy on October 28, Kazakh President Qasym-Zhomart Toqaev said he had ordered the government "to cease cooperation" with the company.
The company was the "worst" investor in Kazakhstan's independent history, Toqaev added at the meeting, which independent media were prevented from attending.
ArcelorMittal Temirtau had maintained a stony silence amid increasingly hostile rhetoric from officials over their track record of industrial accidents and notorious pollution during the last year or so.
But the same day that Toqaev visited the region, the company released a statement acknowledging that it had earlier this month agreed to a "transaction" with authorities that would see the company hand its assets back to the Kazakh government.
Qaraghandy Governor Yermaganbet Bulekpaev, meanwhile, reaffirmed Kazakhstan's intent to seek a new investor for the integrated mine and steelworks complex that is the province's largest private investor.
The end of an era, then? Perhaps -- but others believe nothing will change.
As the government acknowledged in the immediate aftermath of the fatal fire at the company's Kazakhstanskaya coal mine in August, ArcelorMittal's operations in Kazakhstan have always been many times more fatal than the company's operations elsewhere.
And in foreign investment, "the rules of the game are determined by the state," argued Dosym Satpaev, a well-known political commentator, in an October 28 post on Facebook. "If these rules have no place for protecting the interests of ordinary workers, if local authorities spit on these protections from a high tower, then investors will perceive it as a green light [to do the same]," Satpaev said, comparing the mines under the company's control to "war zones."
'You Don't Care!'
Relatives gathered at ArcelorMittal's office at the Kostenko mine seemed disinclined to make a distinction between what Satpaev labeled "the greed of the owners and many years of indifference from the authorities" in his social-media post.
"How do you even look people in the eyes? Why didn't you think about this yesterday?" fumed one distraught woman at a briefing given by an official from the Emergencies Ministry and a company employee. "Had there not been enough explosions in mines already? What needs to be done to prevent this disaster for the people? You don't care!" she added.
Even during Toqaev's onsite address, heckling complaints from the audience about official corruption could be heard.
The mood was raw, too, on October 30, as the bereaved queued to bid farewell to their loved ones at a ceremony at Qaraghandy's central mosque, where several grieving women fainted.
Saule Ukubaeva, the aunt of a 42-year-old man who died in the tragedy, said that the miner had been suffering sleepless nights ever since one of his colleagues became disabled in a mine accident. "His mother told him to quit," she said. "But he said that he wouldn't. He said he loved his job."
In an indication of official anxiety, the Culture and Information Ministry sent on October 29 a recommendation to media outlets to close the comment sections on their websites under articles about the tragedy.
Social networks brimmed with rage, however, with many users calling for Indian-born billionaire Lakshmi Mittal, ArcelorMittal's executive chairman, to face justice.
Similar ire was directed toward Kazakhstan's long-ruling first president, Nursultan Nazarbaev, who enticed Mittal and his company to revive the Soviet-era steelworks where the 83-year-old began his working life more than 60 years ago.
The details of that agreement have never been disclosed to the public.
Nor, so far, have the details of the state's divorce with ArcelorMittal Temirtau, or the terms under which the government is seeking a new investor for the giant industrial complex.
But one thing is obvious to many Kazakhs.
These incidents simply don't happen with such regularity in countries where workers rights are protected -- including by the kind of independent unions that Kazakhstan's government has regularly suppressed.
"If we look at all the instances of accidents happening regularly with large quantities of victims, we see that these tragedies take place on the territory of those states where political rights and freedoms are strongly restricted," argued veteran journalist Lukpan Akhmedyarov in an October 29 episode of his YouTube program Prosto Jurnalistika.
In Kazakhstan, "we see that over the past five to seven years almost all of the miners' unions were subjugated to the interests of the [ruling party]," Akhmedyarov said.
