NUR-SULTAN, January 29. /TASS/. Kazakhstan’s President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev does not think it necessary to conduct an international investigation into the mass riots that broke out in Kazakhstan in January, he said in a televised interview with the national channel Khabar-24, broadcast on Saturday.
"As for the international probe into the events in Kazakhstan, I do not think that such an investigation is needed. We can handle it on our own. We have honest and impartial people who will chair public commissions. Neither my administration nor I took part in creating these commissions. They have freely decided to establish such institutions," he said.
According to Tokayev, the resolution on Kazakhstan, which was recently passed by the European Parliament, is absolutely biased, premature and dictated by lobbyists.
"The lobbyists work by order of our people who left Kazakhstan, having earned serious, big money in our country. And now they are spending it to organize some sorts of demonstrations and to pit people against one another, acting in line with the principle ‘the worse, the better’," Tokayev said.
On January 20, members of the European Parliament passed by a majority vote a resolution demanding an international investigation into the recent events in Kazakhstan. The resolution is not legally binding.
Protests broke out in various Kazakh cities on January 2, escalating into mass riots and attacks against police and military personnel, with government buildings getting ransacked across several cities a few days later. Law and order, Kazakh authorities affirm, was restored to all of the country’s regions by the morning of January 7. On January 19, the state of emergency was lifted across the country. According to authorities, 225 people were killed in the insurrection, and more than 4,500 people injured.