Kazakh police on Thursday arrested anti-regime protesters ahead of next month’s presidential elections, amid numerous reports of popular news and social media sites being taken offline.
Correspondents said they witnessed six arrests in a central square in Kazakhstan’s largest city, Almaty, after calls for a protest at a World War II victory day parade.
A journalist for a Kazakh news Web site, Daniar Moldabekov, was arrested and held in police custody for an hour “without explanation,” Reporters Without Borders said in a statement.
The arrests came after dozens of people were last week detained for calling for a boycott of the June 9 election, which they have said would extend decades of authoritarian rule.
France-based opposition figure Mukhtar Ablyazov, a former banker and energy minister, had called for the protests.
Ablyazov is an outspoken adversary of 78-year-old former Kazakh president Nursultan Nazarbayev, who in March shocked the country by calling time on his presidency.
He is still seen as calling the shots in the oil-rich nation of 18 million people, but he handed over power to Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, a former Kazakh Senate chairman and diplomat who is all but certain to win the election.
On Thursday, Internet users complained that many independent local news Web sites were inaccessible, as well as the Kazakh service of US government-funded Radio Free Europe.
Others living in Almaty, a city of 1.5 million, complained that mobile Internet services were not working.
Facebook, YouTube and Instagram were also inaccessible.
Reporters Without Borders condemned the “massive Internet censorship by Kazakh authorities.”
It also called on Tokayev “to break with the oppressive legacy of his predecessor.”
Nazarbayev, whose reign began three decades ago when Kazakhstan was still a Soviet republic, has been regularly criticized by rights groups for stifling dissidents and the free press.
The country, an ally of Russia and China, has never held an election judged free or fair by Western election monitors.
Nazarbayev triumphed in a 2015 election with nearly 98 percent of the vote.
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese
HYPOCRISY? The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday asked whether Biden was talking about China or the US when he used the word ‘xenophobic’ US President Joe Biden on Wednesday called for a hike in steel tariffs on China, accusing Beijing of cheating as he spoke at a campaign event in Pennsylvania. Biden accused China of xenophobia, too, in a speech to union members in Pittsburgh. “They’re not competing, they’re cheating. They’re cheating and we’ve seen the damage here in America,” Biden said. Chinese steel companies “don’t need to worry about making a profit because the Chinese government is subsidizing them so heavily,” he said. Biden said he had called for the US Trade Representative to triple the tariff rates for Chinese steel and aluminum if Beijing was