ALMATY -- Lawyers with the newly created Qantar (January) foundation say the government’s investigation into deadly anti-government protests that shook the Central Asian nation at the start of this year is inadequate and called on Kazakh authorities to improve their techniques.
At a gathering in the oil-rich nation’s largest city, Almaty, on April 21, the foundation's lawyers said that Kazakh authorities and police intentionally slowed down investigations of deaths and torture during and after the unrest in early January that left at least 230 people dead.
"We can certainly conclude now that law enforcement and courts have reacted inadequately to the tragic January events," lawyer Daniyar Qanafin said at the gathering.
Most of the cases have not been investigated properly, he said.
“There are facts [indicting the] intentional prolongation of the cases, especially those related to gunshot wounds, which are being buried among other cases with some evidence that they are being lost,” he added.
Another lawyer, Rinat Baimolda, said that suspects have not been yet found in one of the most high-profile cases, a probe launched into the fatal shooting of a family that had nothing to do with the protests.
Qosai Makhanbaev, a man who and was shot while taking part in the rallies and later arrested and sent to jail for 37 days, where he says he was tortured, attended the gathering as well.
"They kept us lying on a concrete floor, tortured us with hunger, imposed moral and physical pressure on us, trying to make us confess to terrorism, namely the raping of nurses at hospitals and the beheading of a police officer," Makhanbaev said.
The Qantar foundation was established in recent weeks by noted Kazakh entrepreneurs to provide legal assistance to victims of the violent dispersal of the protests.
A peaceful protest in the tightly controlled former Soviet republic's western region of Manghystau over a fuel-price hike led to protests across the country and ended with deadly shootings in Almaty.
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Video: A Closer Look At What's Driving The Protests
During the protests, Kazakh authorities switched off the Internet and restricted mobile phone operations for five days.
Kazakh President Qasym-Zhomart Toqaev blamed rights activists and independent journalists for "inciting" the protests, which led to the arrest of several reporters in different towns and cities across the country.
Toqaev said in the wake of the protests that "20,000 extremists trained in foreign terrorist camps" attacked Almaty, but he did not provide any evidence to support the claim. As the unrest spread, Toqaev requested help from the Russian-led Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO).
Toqaev also publicly said then that he had ordered security forces “to shoot to kill without warning.”
Kazakh authorities have said that at least 230 people, including 19 law enforcement officers, were killed across the country, but human rights groups say the exact number of people killed during the unrest may be much higher.