In an apparent attempt to prevent possible ethnic clashes, Kazakh authorities have deployed special forces and increased the presence of law enforcement in the town of Zaghambar in the southern region of Turkistan, where tensions are running high following the alleged sexual assault of a teenage girl.
After police in the town -- where around three-quarters of its 5,400 residents are ethnic Uzbeks -- said on April 24 that a teenage boy had been arrested on suspicion of carrying out the assault, unknown perpetrators threw Molotov cocktails at several houses, barns, and three cars belonging to ethnic Uzbeks.
Police said that 16 young men had been detained on suspicion of carrying out the arson attacks. Local residents told RFE/RL that all of the suspected arson attackers were ethnic Kazakhs.
Zaghambar has been cordoned off by police and special forces since April 24, while telephone and the Internet connections remain blocked.
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Ethnic Tensions High As Kazakh Village Shaken By Alleged School Rape
By sending special forces to the remote village and blocking communications, the authorities appear to be trying to prevent possible ethnic clashes similar to those that took place in another southern region -- Zhambyl.
In that region in February 2020, a road-rage brawl led to violent clashes between Kazakhs and Kazakh citizens from the ethnic Dungan minority -- a Muslim group of Chinese origin -- that left 11 people dead, dozens injured, and more than 30 houses, 17 commercial buildings, and 47 vehicles burned down.
More than 20,000 people, mostly Dungans, fled the villages where the violence erupted. Many of them ended up in the neighboring Kyrgyz region of Chui, where the majority of Central Asia's Dungans live.
Kazakh officials said at the time that most of the displaced Dungans returned to Kazakhstan several days later.
In February 2015, a quarrel between a Kazakh and an ethnic Tajik in another southern Kazakh district, Bostandyq, ended in the Kazakh man's death, which led to an anti-Tajik rampage involving homes and vehicles belonging to Tajiks being set on fire.
The maintaining ethnic harmony has been a major goal of the Kazakh government's domestic policies for decades. About 140 ethnic groups are represented among citizens of the former Soviet republic, where many ethnic minorities in the former Soviet Union were deported by Moscow in the 1940s.
The issue of ethnic concord became especially sensitive for Astana after Russia launched its ongoing invasion of Ukraine in 2022, asserting its "right" to intervene in foreign countries to protect Russian speakers.
More than 20 percent of Kazakhstan's 19 million people are ethnic Russians or so-called Russian speakers, mainly residing in northern regions bordering Russia and bigger cities, such as Almaty, the largest city, and Astana, the capital.