NUR-SULTAN, January 5. /TASS/. Protesters have pulled down a monument to Kazakhstan’s first president Nursultan Nazarbayev in the town of Taldykorgan, in the country’s southeast, the KazTAG portal reported on Wednesday.
The photos published on the portal show that the statue was torn down from a pedestal and was broken into two parts.
Taldykorgan is the administrative center of the Almaty Region. The monument to Nazarbayev was erected in 2016.
On January 2, crowds took to the streets in the cities of Zhanaozen and Aktau in the Mangystau Region, in southwestern Kazakhstan, protesting against high fuel prices. Two days later, the protests engulfed Almaty, in the country’s southeast, where the police used flashbangs to disperse the crowd, as well as other cities, including Atyrau, Aktobe (in the west), Uralsk (in the northwest), Taraz, Shymkent, Kyzylorda (in the south), Karaganda (in the northeast) and even Kazakhstan’s capital Nur-Sultan. Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev imposed a two-week state of emergency in the Mangystau Region and in the Almaty Region, as well as the republic’s largest city of Almaty and the capital Nur-Sultan. On January 5, the head of the state also accepted the government’s resignation. Its members will continue to perform their tasks until a new cabinet is formed.