Authorities Will Try to Hide a Number of Victims Having Buried Their Bodies in Steppe

Working activists are afraid that the authorities will try to bury secretly the bodies of their dead comrades and civilians as it happened during events of 1989. Then internal troops also shot citizens and then tried to hide corpses in confidential burial places. Already then Nazarbayev was in power in the country as one of the heads of the Central Committee of the Communist Party and supervised suppression of excitements of the populace. Now the story repeats itself, this time striking oil industry workers and simple citizens of Mangystauskaya region became victims. Now the main task of the created Public commission, independent trade unions and opposition is not to allow hiding of true scales of a mode’s crime. So, about figures of the dead …

Today there are all bases for such fears as only in Zhanaozen there are over hundred people who are considered missing. Relatives can't find them either in hospitals, or in mortuaries, in prisons and police departments. The relatives are not given the bodies of citizens who died of wounds in hospitals that also can be considered as humiliating treatment of people the most part of whom are followers of Muslim traditions. Messages about dead, wounded and missing persons have been arriving from the settlement of Shetpe where a night fight between the workers and internal troops passed from December, 17^th to December, 18^th. Meanwhile former information about 70 victims is completely proved by other mass-media and eyewitnesses from among workers, local residents and relatives of the killed.

Thus in the evening on December, 18th activist Sholpan К. Managed to get in touch with us to talk for few minutes from Mangystauskaya regional hospital, she told that about forty critically wounded patients stay there, not taking into account slightly wounded the most part from whom have already left hospital. That day her husband should have undergone operation as the bullet from Kalashnikov's automatic machine got stuck in his hip. They started to bring people into the regional hospital on December, 16th – 17^th, the hospital is situated in 120 kilometers from the place of events. It was done when regional hospital and all medical institutions of Zhanaozen were completely full with wounded and there were even no medicines and dressings.

As she said in the first fight in Zhanaozen 22 people were killed at once during first half an hour, one died of wounds on the way to the hospital in Aktau, three more young guys and a girl died from bullets next to the building of the department store. Three young workers and a mother of the oil industry worker who was hurt with the bullet died in her arms. The girl of eleven years old lay on the square with the bullet in her head. When by the evening on December, 16th units of marines, internal troops and armoured troop-carriers were brought into the city, the quantity of victims increased having reached 70. Military men and policemen shot even at those people who simply went out from entrances. The workers and relatives managed to took the most part of corpses away during the firing from the central square and from the central quarters in the suburbs of a city.

Fights in the suburbs and in a private sector of Zhanaozen took place during the evening of December, 16th and all night of December, 17^th, young workers tried to show resistance to the armies. Then the quantity of killed exceeded 100 persons. It’s impossible to find many of those who remained to lie in twilight and at night in the streets till now. Now the Public Commission from among representatives of Mangystausky independent regional trade union "Аktau", representatives of opposition parties and public associations intends to gather all data about quantity of the killed, missing, wounded and detained. Relatives intend to gather all lists within December, 19-20th. However authorities till now do not allow to carry out funerals that causes serious fears about possibility of concealment of corpses of the killed by the authorities.

Journalists of independent and foreign mass-media, legal experts, members of working committee of oil industry workers and trade union "Аktau" carry out constant gathering of data, stories of eyewitnesses, they complete photo and video materials. There is a big threat that members of the administrative board of independent trade union and activists of the Public Commission will undergo reprisals as mass arrests of workers participating in meetings and demonstration on December, 16^th, 17^th and 18^th pass in Zhanaozen, Shetpe and Zhetybai. We will follow the events and make the public and the international working-class movement know all facts which will be known to us.

Information service of the Socialist Movement of Kazakhstan

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