ALMATY, Kazakhstan—Critics of the 22-year-old authoritarian rule of President Nursultan Nazarbayev staged protests in four cities Saturday and were met by overwhelming police forces but little violence, according to press and opposition reports.
It was the third set of demonstrations in three months, and each was met with a stronger response than the last.
In Almaty, the main city, rows of policemen armed with batons but no firearms hemmed in some 150 demonstrators, mostly elderly Kazakh men, on a narrow sidewalk, allowing them to make speeches but then arresting most of the speakers.
Hours earlier, police arrested Bulat Abilov and Amirzhan Kossanov, two leaders of the only legal opposition party, the Azat Social Democratic Party, at their office. They were taken to court, where a judge sentenced them to two weeks in jail for calling Saturday's demonstration in Almaty, at a demonstration last month.
"But I already served 18 days in jail for last month's demonstration" (as did Mr. Kossanov), Mr. Abilov, co-chairman of the Social Democratic Party, protested to the judge. Both said they were going on a hunger strike.
"This is totally illegal," said Zharmakhan Tuyakbay, a former parliament speaker and co-chairman of the Social Democratic Party, at the court hearing.
"The government is going to create their own Arab Spring by preventing ordinary people from exercising basic rights," added Baltash Tusumbayev, a former secretary of the country's National Security Council and a member of the opposition party.
Since the deaths of at least 17 demonstrators in the poverty-stricken Western town of Zhanaozen last December, the first major bloodshed in a quarter century, more than a dozen activists and journalists have been jailed and scores more are being formally investigated.
Reached by telephone in Zhanaozen, the wife one of the oilmen whose seven-month strike led to the violence said about 15 women held a protest to demand the release of their relatives. "The police called me in yesterday and told me that I'd get two weeks in jail if I went, but I went anyway," she said in a telephone interview.
Social Democratic Party, President Nursultan Nazarbayev, Bulat Abilov, Amirzhan Kossanov, demonstration, National Security Council, Almaty, demonstrations, Zharmakhan Tuyakbay, demonstrators, Baltash Tusumbayev
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