State of emergency in Kazakh oil town after deadly riots

Kazakhstan President Nursultan Nazarbayev on Saturday declared a state of emergency in the Caspian town of Zhanaozen after clashes between police and laid-off oil workers killed at least 11 people. The state of emergency will last until January 5 to "ensure public safety, rebuild law and order, and defend citizens' rights and freedoms," said a decree posted on the president's official website. Nazarbayev denounced the rioters as "hooligans" for attacking local residents gathered near a stage set up in the town's main square for independence day celebrations Friday. "They beat up peaceful citizens, smashed parked cars and set them on fire," he said. "One must not mix up an oil workers' labour dispute with the actions of hooligans wanting to exploit the situation for their own ends." The violence in Zhanaozen, an oil town in Kazakhstan's southwestern Mangistau region, erupted on Friday when oil workers stormed the stage, kicking over sound equipment and setting the Christmas tree on fire. They proceeded to torch the town's administration building, hotels and the office of Uzenmunaigas, the local subsidiary of oil company Kazmunaigaz. "We will find out where this is financed from, and who is organising this," Nazarbayev  said, announcing the creation of a special commission to investigate Friday's events. Interior Minister Kalmukhanbet Kasymov said the deadly riots involved oil workers who had been fired from Kazmunaigaz, and that the situation was now "calm". But on Saturday afternoon, a Kazakh opposition website reported that gunshots had been heard in Zhanaozen. The website socdeistvie.info posted a link to a YouTube video in which a man is speaking on the phone at 15:30 GMT, with what sounds like machine-gun fire in the background. AFP could not immediately verify the report, as communications to Zhanaozen had been severed. Workers in Zhanaozen and other cities in the Mangistau region on the Caspian Sea have been on strike for months for higher wages, in a highly unusual dispute for the Central Asian state which prides itself on its ability to attract foreign investors. The official death toll climbed from 10 to 11 on Saturday, according to the general prosecutor, while the number of wounded was 86. Seventy people have been arrested. Opposition Kyrgyzstan-based Kazakh television channel K-plus quoted workers and other witnesses as blaming the police for opening fire on an unarmed crowd, which included children. "Three people died before my eyes, OMON (riot police) was shooting," the channel quoted one witness Sholpan Otekeyeva as saying about Friday's events. There were no emergency vehicles, and many people died on the way to hospital, including a child, she said, surrounded by people waiting near ambulances at the hospital entrance. "I think about 50 people died," she said, according to footage on the satellite channel's YouTube account. "The incident raises serious questions. The main one is, what reasons did the police have for using firearms against unarmed people?" the opposition National Social Democratic party said in a statement. Many websites, including Twitter, RIA Novosti news agency, and regional agency Lada.kz have been blocked in Kazakhstan since Friday evening. The cell phones of journalists in Aktau, the regional centre about 120 kilometres (75 miles) from Zhanaozen, were also blocked. News agencies quoted a Uzenmunaigaz statement as saying that some employees did not show up for work during the night shift and that the company had to relocate offices after its building was set on fire. Kazakhstan was the last of 15 Soviet republics to declare its independence from the fading Soviet Union, on December 16, 1991. Its vast energy reserves are hugely attractive for neighbouring energy-hungry China as well as for the West, which is keen to reduce Europe's dependence on Russia's hydrocarbons.