Late on the evening of 15 January, the General Prosecutor’s Office of Kazakhstan released an important figure: 225.
This, prosecutors state, is the number of people who were killed or wounded during the protests and violence that shook the country between 2 and 10 January, after a fuel price rise brought thousands of people out onto the streets. The protests ended in violence, looting, the arrival of Russian troops and a state of emergency around the country.
Communications and internet in Kazakhstan were switched off midway through the protests. It took prosecutors ten days after the start of the protests to publish information about casualties. The majority of people died in Almaty, the country’s commercial capital, which during the protests quickly became an epicentre of violence. Later, the total number of deaths was increased to 227.
