qforqazaq

[qforqazaq]

Just wanted to thank you for your wonderful posts on this blog ^^ Spotify recommended me 91's Bari Biled just a few days ago, and I really quite enjoyed it and got curious. I do listen to kpop, which it had a bit of a vibe of, but i very quickly went "wait, what language is this???" so I had to look up more stuff about them and q-pop. Even tho as a Norwegian it's funny that I listen to basically every language /but/ Norwegian when i listen to music, as the tendency seems to be.

Hey,

Thanks for the comment.

Good to know you're discovering new music that you can enjoy!

Not sure, if this is at all relevant at this point, but hope your discovery didn't end there, and you found more good stuff in the Kazakh music space :D

[qforqazaq]

When is it proper to use Kazakh and to use Kazakhstani?

Kazakh usually refers to the ethnicity, while Kazakhstani refers to the citizenship

Although, in recent years people are trying to redefine these concepts, sort of encouraging non-Kazakh Kazakhstanis to feel more comfortable identifying themselves as just Kazakhs

Tbh, it's just some post-colonial bs when former white colonisers can't bring themselves to identify with the formerly subjugated people

All that, of course, happen on a very subconscious level, so, let's say, an ethnic Russian born in Kazakhstan might not even understand it

In either case, I think the moment when every person born in Kazakhstan regardless of ethnicity will finally feel comfortable enough calling themselves Kazakhs, that would be the moment when we could finally say that the interethnic assimilation was successfully completed and the national identity solidified

[qforqazaq]

I may just be getting limited suggestions on Instagram but I see more qpop boy groups than girls in general. And project X is for a boy group. As someone in Kazakhstan, is there a reason boy groups might be more popular/lucrative or is it an accidental pattern?

Another quite ancient ask.

I would say, the girl bands can't get much traction because girls in Kazakhstan are often expected to get married in their early twenties, so probably not many producers are keen to take such a risk

Also, I've noticed that even if we drop the whole "marriage is a must" narrative, women in Kazakhstan are a lot more pragmatic when it comes to their career choices. So, very few girls would actually goof around doing music or anything of that sort instead of getting real jobs. And, well, having a career and then getting married/having kids, all preferably, before hitting 30, are still kind of a larger expectation for women

In that sense, men seem to be more adventurous, feeling a lot more confident in their artistic pursuits, because the clock "isn't ticking", bringing less sense of urgency overall

Although, I should add, men have their own obsessive ideas of becoming rich/famous/influential asap, so probably becoming a rapper can be viewed as a quick way to reach success

On the flip side, this mentality comes with a massive share of the male population having legitimate gambling addiction along with insurmountable debts, all because of the inherent sense of privilege, extremely fragile egos, and inability to be disciplined, consistent and build a reliable career

Honestly, I would say this society is largely being upheld by competent women, while men are hanging around, doing some random shit, expecting to be worshipped/hailed because of their mere existence

I'm grossly generalising, of course, but it is sadly true in the majority of cases

[qforqazaq]

What do you think of the new Mad Men song?

This ask is probably ancient, and I have no idea what song that would be :'D

For the record, half of the former Mad Men members got caught selling drugs, so the boyband is no more

To be quite frank, they weren't that good either, so would've probably disbanded even if this scandal didn't happen

[qforqazaq]

What can you say about Mongolia following Kazakhstan on stripping the Cyrillic alphabet out of official use by 2025? Looks like they hate Russia too

Can't say I have a lot of opinion about this topic (don't really follow anything related to Mongolia tbh)

Whatever the reason, they do them, why the hell not

Also, frankly, hardly know any country that doesn't hate Russia at this point

They're or specifically their government is honestly a pain in everyone's arse (especially the neighbours')

[qforqazaq]

The Kitchen songs" is Qpop or Kazakh music/Kazakh pop??

Depends on what you define as Q-pop.

If Q-pop = a knock-off genre that stemmed from K-pop, then no, he's not Q-pop

If Q-pop = contemporary pop music in Kazakh, then yes, the kitchen songs belongs to Q-pop

[qforqazaq]

Do the second part of the "Qpop vocabulary".Thanks in advance!

I don't think there'll be any.

Also, I know I'm answering all these super late, so this request might not be very relevant anymore anyway, I suppose

[qforqazaq]

Hello:)!Is there a "term" to refer to our favorite in a Qpop group??And what "terms" for the younger and older groups??

I don't think we have anything like that.

Maybe people have been translating terms like that from Korean, but tbh it was all very artificial, nothing native/genuine.

[qforqazaq]

there are some terms in kazakh to "Bias" and Utt(Ultimate). I saw Qpop vocabulary and I didn't find it.

Don't think it exists tbh.

And, technically, it was just a Kazakh vocabulary, not sure why I labeled it as a Q-pop one.

I guess to get the attention of Q-pop fans.

Anyway, that's that.

[qforqazaq]

Borat 😂😂😂🤣🤣

What about him?

[qforqazaq]

wow, i know about my native country less than English speakers(i thought you don't live there, but if you do, this is cool!). I was even surprised seeing post about Kazakh music. I don't listen to Kazakh music, but i know that it has beautiful, unique chord progression and melody.

I live in Kazakhstan(i'm gen z btw). Despite the low economy, horrifying ecology and medicine, unhappy citizens, i can say that i like living here. I'm pretty proud of being Kazakh. Have a good day!!

Hey,

I'm actually a Kazakh from Kazakhstan :'D

Was studying abroad when I started it, been living in Almaty for around 6.5 years now.

So, yeah, hope that answers your bewildered curiosity.

Good to know some still find this blog insightful/useful, although I haven't updated for ages.

Cheers ✌️

[qforqazaq]

Hi! I know you haven't posted in a couple months so I don't know if you'll see this, but I have followed you for a long time and I really appreciate your candor in talking about Qazaqstan. I'm so glad you choose to share your perspective here. It can be very difficult to learn about Qazaqstan in an authentic way outside of first person perspectives, especially with the lack of resources in English.

I am currently working on an assignment for a class where I need to right 1000 words about a country I want to go to, and specifically about the deep culture (people’s attitudes, beliefs, and core values, including attitudes towards gender, social status, age, raising children, perception of time, the role of family) and classroom and educational culture. I immediately thought of your blog as a great resource that goes beyond surface culture like cuisine, clothing and holidays.

I would like to dig through your blog and some other Qazaqstan focused blogs on here as one part of my research, and I hope you're okay with me citing you as a source! Additionally, if there's anything more you would like to share about these topics if you do see this that you think I should include, I would be super grateful for your contribution! It's not a super academically rigorous assignment, but I want to represent Qazaq & Qazaqstani culture well.

Appreciate you so much, hope you're well!

Hey,

Thanks for the message!

Glad to know you still find the info here useful.

Sure, feel free to cite this blog as a source, I would be honoured, actually 😄

Not sure if I'll be adding anything else anytime soon though. Still, I hope you'll find something citable for your assignment here.

Good luck with that, and cheers ✌️

[qforqazaq]

In his autobiography “Mein Leben” (1937), the Kazakhian akyn Dzhambul described the requirements for the traditional nomadic bard: He had to know all the tribes and families, all the tribal elders, all place-names and events. He had to be thoroughly familiar with all the questions of the time. Ready wit and resource, the ability to give quick answers—these were accomplishments without which the akyn found no popular esteem. Further, he must have sang-froid. Even when he was jeered at and when mockery was heaped upon him he must always remain calm. He might not, moreover, intoxicate himself with others’ melodies, he must have a voice of his own, and must ‘measure the earth with his own ell.’ His every word must hit the mark like a dagger thrust. Nor might he feign emotion that he did not feel; he must take the words from his heart as water is taken from the source.

Edward Hirsch. A Poet's Glossary.

[qforqazaq]

Probably, the most sober, sincere, dignified, informed, inspiring and kind thing I've ever read on this hellsite or, possibly, the internet as the whole.

For that, I can only say "thank you, OP" and reblog so more people could read this.

i guess i'm not as despairing as many people about the future of the planet simply because the fact that we're not in way worse shape today suggests the earth is crazy resilient

Reading anything about environmental history is like "and by 1956 the river was so full of uranium and bubonic plague that the only living organism found in it was an single amoeba which died immediately after being documented" and I'm like okay maybe today's problems aren't necessarily uniquely disastrous and unsolvable

[qforqazaq]

Just a good snapshot on what Turkic people are, and why I keep saying Turkic does not equal Turkish.

Also, if you want to get into the whole "Mamluk Kipchaks who ended up ruling over countries where they were sold as slaves", just Google "Sultan Beibarys".

Spoiler: a Kipchak boy sold as a slave in Egypt, ends up ruling it.

Cheers.

[qforqazaq]

Hmm, I think you might be overthinking this thing a bit.

For starters, Q-pop never really stuck tbh, it was something only a small fraction out of mainly K-pop obsessed fans were invested in because it was generally easy to parasitise on that part of the audience. And, well, that was the initial clever plan, wasn't it.

Q-pop never had the infrastructure in the first place (as if the other parts of the KZ showbiz had lol), hence 91 being the pioneers and the current sole representatives of the genre. Albeit, if we consider "Q-pop" to be that knock-off genre based on the said inventions of the South Korean entertainment machine.

If we are to consider Q-pop being "contemporary popular songs in the Kazakh language", however, as, I think, Yerbolat had mentioned a while ago, I would argue that Q-pop is actually prevailing - thriving even - since now the local music in Kazakh is a lot more popular than, say, Russian music from Russia as it used to be the case 5 years ago. I'd say nowadays people in KZ have as many Kazakh hits in their Apple Music/Spotify/Yandex Music playlists as whatever American/British/other Western international celebrities' concoctions.

Also, it's not really about their appearance - I don't think people on average actually care about this at this point. Don't get me wrong, Kazakhstan is still quite a homophobic country, but come on, this hair colour debate is so 2016. And no, I don't think the guys individually are homophobic, in that regard my general impression was that the Almaty creative hipster scene is rather liberal. Unless you're a new guy who just dropped out of conservative nowhere.

In either case, I would say the bad PR with the whole earrings/hair dye controversy in the group's early days played in their favour overall, as more people got to know them, including those who didn't even listen to K-pop.

I would also argue they sort of gave up on the whole "giving Asian pop boyband vibes to get the attention of impressionable 14 year olds" since around the album 91, because that one sounded extra trendy, not at all K-pop-ish, with all those sound effects and auto-tunes and such.

That's not even the point though.

The point is they sort of waited it out a bit too long, missed the window of opportunity, I suppose, with all that COVID break, and probably Yerbolat kind of mulling things over for a bit longer than needed. While they were off, all those other acts showed up and kept spitting out content after content. And all of a sudden we have the whole variety of the local music that basically allowed for the situation that I already illustrated: when you can legitimately have playlists packed with only songs made in KZ, at least 90% of them would be in the Kazakh language, and all of that is actually produced by, intended to and listened by the local youth. This fact alone is simply phenomenal to the point that if I was told this could be a thing a mere decade ago, I wouldn't have even believed it. And there I was trying to promote the Kazakh pop music to my Kazakh friends 5 years ago which mostly raised unamused eyebrows, eh. I was ahead of the time, I suppose, an early adopter of sorts (to the point of having an actual blog about it) as the same friends listen to the Kazakh music now, what a fucking surprise.

But where were we?

Ah, Ninety One slowed down and that didn't help the traction when competition started popping up.

And, well, the market proved to be more in favour of mostly hip-hop/rap single or double acts that are cruder/more authentic in delivery with less censorship, and not exactly polished boybands with elaborate choreography routines. Although, I must say, the guys still have the fanbase, it's just not as ardent as it used to be because, well, you know, life happened, the kids grew up, time flies, what can you do. It's been 8 years, after all, those 14 year olds are at least 22 now, and are probably collectively having their respective graduation ceremonies at their respective universities or something.

Come to think of it though, the 91 guys must have still contributed to these Zoomers' propensity to listen to the contemporary Kazakh music without the whole colonial brainwashing and the inferiority complex of the generations prior.

Anyway, the point of this long incoherent monologue: it's not about the earrings or hair dye, but the missed timeframe + changing tides of the market trends/tastes when it comes to the local music.

Also, I don't really think they can afford to actually split up - the local showbiz is poor af, it's not like anyone from the group had accumulated a fortune to secure a prosperous future with comfortable lifestyle. Just a reminder that we're not in the States where the music industry's contributions to the GDP is equivalent to the GDP of this entire country (no, seriously, Google it, the KZ GDP is only around 20 bils more.) I must point out they did live off those McDonald's/inDrive/Otbasy Bank commercials after the Juz split only thanks to the Ninety One™ brand that still holds some value.

If they do want to continue as solo acts though, it would require some serious marketing chops, and a bit of luck to catch that trend wave with whatever content they'll individually decide to produce.

They'll need to monetise their ventures somehow too, so I would expect more commercials - whether or not they'd be able to secure serious sponsorship contracts while not being under the Ninety One™ brand is one big question though.

All in all, can't say I know the answer to your question, I just know that times have changed, the K-pop rage had peaked in around 2017, Q-pop never took flight, and Ninety One are probably trying to reimagine themselves to stay relevant in the today's market.

Towards a grand unified theory of what's going on with Ninety One right now.

Like all theories, this one can't be taken seriously until it's been scrutinized and tested. So I'll say the same thing I said about my Gap speculations: if you know I'm wrong or misinformed, please please please please tell me.

In the last couple days I've gotten access to three pieces of information I didn't have before, that have led me to say, okay, maybe this is what happened. The first was an Instagram reel from a fluffy entertainment site reporting on the original TikTok live, which quoted Ace directly (machine translation; I put this one through both Google Translate and Yandex Translate and they didn't differ much):

We'll keep putting on concerts until winter. Then we plan to take a break for an indefinite period, 1, 2, maybe 3 years. Maybe each of us will go our own way. Maybe our direction will change. We want to rest and take a break from our current image. Even if we come back, everything might be different than before. [emphasis mine]

The second piece of information was another fluff piece, on TikTok's self-reported "sounds of the summer" in Kazakhstan. Irina Kairatovna made the list, as did Kalifarniya, and a couple non-Kazakh songs (a remix of "Makeba"; Teya Dora, who's Serbian, I believe), but Ninety One did not.

And the third piece, courtesy of the lovely @bbcblackjack, was that Kalifarniya was previously in a Q-pop group called Divine, but has since renounced Q-pop; while I can't quote his words directly, he apparently used the kind of homophobic language that Ninety One has never, in my knowledge, stooped to using.

So here's what I think happened, told chronologically.

The combination of the pandemic and the MadMen arrests devastated Q-pop as a whole; when Kazakhstan's music scene finally began to revive, in 2021, there weren't a lot of Q-pop groups with the resources to start making inroads on the scene again. Instead the momentum shifted to IK and other hip-hop artists. Which should have stood to benefit Ninety One once they went independent and started making up for lost ground in 2022. I think within Pop Almaty (my nickname for the indie-ish popular-music scene there) itself, Ninety One is respected and regarded as peers: hence the IK collaborations, ZaQ cutting a track with De Lacure, and Yenlik appearing in the Yeski Taspa series. (Also remember that the guys were awfully reluctant to condemn Shiza acting up onstage when asked about him during the Zamandas interview.)

I think they expected that respect to carry over into their public image. ("Bata" is their "Everybody (Backstreet's Back)," but it's also a boomy, Future-influenced track: a hip-hop move as much as a pop one.) But it didn't: they were still "Q-pop." And that hurt them in three different ways:

The general way of trends changing; what was cool three or six years ago isn't so likely to be cool now, in pop music. So the fans who had been listening to "Aiyptama" and "Kaytadan" at age 14 had moved on, and...

...because there was no real Q-pop infrastructure, they couldn't pick up a new Q-pop-oriented audience easily. (Contrast to K-pop, where new ZEROBASEONE fans have ready opportunities to discover the likes of SHINee and Infinite.)

But whereas the popularity proved transient, the homophobic unpopularity stuck: Ninety One was still dealing with the real-Kazakh-men-don't-wear-earrings bullshit.

(This is where Kalifarniya's new popularity comes into my argument. In the video for "Puerto Rico," he's dancing sensuously on a beach while wearing an oversized pink suit: in other words, using artsy idol imagery to his own advantage. Squint and you're watching a BTS solo video. But because he was willing to distance himself from Q-pop and the supposed Gay Cooties, the public's willing to accept the idol presentation on its own terms.)

#3 would explain why they had trouble with touring last year—the canceled gig in Turkestan, the canceled-and-rescheduled gig in Shymkent—and why they didn’t really have a tour this year. I find it very hard to believe that they didn’t plan to go to places like Kostanai and Semey and Oskemen to promote their second full album, and easier to believe that they planned to and ran into enough opposition that they eventually gave up in frustration and just settled for one Astana and one Almaty concert.

“But, Jessica,” you ask now, “they were able to go to Semey and Aqtobe and the like in 2017, 2018, 2019; what’s changed?” That’s a weakness of my theorizing. This is very speculative and you should take it with enormous amounts of salt, but here’s a possibility: one downstream consequence of Bloody January might be that local akimat now have a little more power relative to federal officials in Astana, and that new empowering might embolden said akimat to say, no we will not have these dyed-haired pooftahs coming in from Almaty to corrupt our innocent youth, thank you very much. Might, maybe, who knows, if you think I’m going too far out on a limb please do tell me. (Another possibility: the actual costs of booking the shows and traveling to them have gone up enough to make the trips no longer worth it.)

Meanwhile our dudes were spending the second half of 2022 and early 2023 refining the album and spending money. I don’t mean just getting the office (though given the hiatus plans, I am curious how long a lease they signed). But my understanding is that they were financing the Yeski Taspa series, and they also paid for the “Symbaim” music video, which was probably a decent outlay. This may have been financially risky; they may have been doing insufficient future-proofing, or putting more weight on Gap to save them then it turned out to be able to bear. (I don’t think they said specifically that they were financially as well as emotionally exhausted; I’m reading that factor into events, and may be wrong.) But it makes perfect sense. First of all, they are hardly the first startup whose first-year reach may have exceeded its grasp. Also, like I keep telling y’all, Pop Almaty is a small town, and Ninety One not only want to keep their own good reputations in this small town, but grow the town’s economic prospects if they can, for themselves and for the people they care about who also live and work in this small town—Veronika, Bibotta, Assiya and the other dancers, Nurs Bazarbay, their friends such as Ne1tron and Ray and Kyle Ruh, Ace’s brother. ZaQ in particular (and Boss Yerbolat before him) has been very consistent in arguing that they want to succeed not just for themselves but for a larger musical and artistic community.

But that meant they had to regain popularity with Gap. And they didn’t. I don’t know why they didn’t. Like I said, I think “pop goodness but also processing the helplessness and frustration they felt over Bloody January” might have been too loaded for their potential K-pop-adjacent fans but too pop for fans of IK and Shiza. They might have gotten away with it in 2019, when Q-pop didn’t look done and dusted, and they bet they could still get away with it in 2023, and lost. But like pretty much everything else here, that’s speculative.

The big, obvious risk, then, is that abandoning their “current image” will mean they finally go along with what seem to be prevailing expectations of public homophobia. (This is an aside, but the anthropologist Alice Evans recently wrote an interesting essay reporting on recent research suggesting that homophobia gained currency in parts of the former Soviet Union, including Kazakhstan, after widespread first- and second-hand experience with prison rape during the gulag era.) I don’t know. I can’t guarantee you that they haven’t made homophobic statements already; I can only tell you that I’ve been bracing myself for such news for years now and it hasn’t reached me yet. It’s entirely possible that part of “each of us going our own way” will include divergence on this issue, too—that one or more of them, but not necessarily all four, will publicly run from the Gay Cooties. (To be entirely frank, I have my guesses as to which members would be more or less likely to take such a stance, but my predictions are almost always wrong—remember, I was the hotshot who thought “Su Asty” was going to be a ballad—and I’d rather not tar any of the dudes preemptively or wrongly, and especially not both.)

What I don’t think is going to happen (although see above re my prediction track record) is that they’ll completely abandon their commitments to Pop Almaty. Those commitments will vary in focus and scope; Alem’s are more likely to be in the contexts of his TV work and Veronika, for example, and ZaQ’s to the larger hip-hop scene. They have said in the past that they planned to release solo work; this hiatus would give them the chance to do so without Eaglez breathing down their necks for more group work.

I’m less sure about whether we’re going to continue to get OT4 hanging out for our amusement. Maybe cameos on each other’s Instagram or Ace’s TikTok, but the likes of Space may be part of the image package they want to get away from. We may run up against the paradox where the bro-dom looks weaker but is actually stronger, once they can just be close friends pursuing related but separate interests and don’t have to market their bro-dom to us so hard.

I’m feeling… well, still cranky. Gap is a good album! If my narrative is right then they took a risk, in insisting that they could be dyed-haired pop stars who dance onstage and still have something to say, and it didn’t pay off. And neither they nor Eaglez had any right to demand of the universe that it pay off, but still: arrrgh. And there’s no guarantee that what they come back with, if they ever come back as four again, who knows, will inspire me the way Gap does. Meanwhile, if it isn’t already obvious, I would really like them to stay away from the public homophobia, and it’s entirely possible that they won’t. In short: change means uncertainty; uncertainty is not fun.

But it’s also possible that all this will work out to their, and our, benefit: the guys get to support each other doing a wider variety of projects, and we get to listen and watch. Pessimism isn’t necessarily a virtue. So after this I’m going to quit trying to combat the uncertainty by speculating all over the place. Like I said, y’all tell me where I’ve gone off track.

[qforqazaq]

Well, there's no other way to talk about it, is there?

People need to write a news piece for views, and it's just another one of calamities happening everyday in different parts of the world - experts are not and never will be expected to actually sympathise with the subject matter. They absolutely don't have to, really. By the end of the day, it all becomes dry, depersonalised pages in history books.

What I appreciated though is to find many messages on Instagram, Telegram, WhatsApp by many friends and acquaintances I've met over the years all over the world, even those whom I was never close with, asking about my wellbeing which truly was heartwarming.

Friends from London, Paris, LA, Dubai, Berlin, Munich, Kuala Lumpur, Vancouver, Hong Kong - there were even people whom I met only once in my life, and happened to remember I was from Kazakhstan, who cared enough to dig up my social media page in their followers list and write a line to make sure I was indeed okay. If that wouldn't make anyone feel anything but grateful, I don't know what could. Honestly, that was a sort of thing that can restore one's faith in humanity.

It did mine.

So, in the end, it didn't even matter whatever those news outlets were writing. Journalists and political scientists can theorise all they want - it is their job, after all.

Come to think of it, people are always going to care about stuff they've encountered personally anyway. And I'm glad I had people even in the outskirts of my social circle who cared, despite having no connections to the country whatsoever, only to me as a person, and that is more than enough tbh.

Other than that, having a grudge against the very evidently eurocentric world that didn't care enough about a country in the middle of socioeconomic nowhere also known as "Central Asia" sounds rather counterproductive imho. Might as well try to make it a "somewhere", at least by sharing the culture - popular and otherwise - in a silly little blog like mine, I suppose.

P. S. Btw, I've just learned that the construction of Notre Dame de París started in 1163 and was largely completed by 1345 that is exactly 120 years before the inception of the Kazakh Khanate. Isn't that an interesting thought?

Knowing that one (1) architectural masterpiece will always be more culturally significant than entire, well, cultures.

Criminal proceedings against citizens accused of taking part in the protests that rocked Kazakhstan in January 2022 are still ongoing, according to BBC News Russian. More than 5,000 criminal cases were opened in the wake of “Bloody January,” including ones against people who died in the unrest. The targets of these posthumous trials include six people who were killed in Almaty, two who were killed in Kyzylorda, and seven who were killed in Taraz. Kazakhstanis have termed them the “trials of the souls of the dead.”

One of the defendants in question is Shyngys Tastanbekov, who was 34 when he was killed. Investigators alleged that he took part in the protests and that four other suspects who also died during the unrest attacked the president’s residence and the city administration building. All five of them were convicted, and the ruling was upheld by an appeals court in June. The court did not hand down a sentence, citing the defendants’ deaths.

Zhaksylyk Dolda, the lawyer representing Tastanbekov’s family, has denounced the trial as political, citing procedural violations committed during the investigation phase. The prosecution’s “evidence,” for example, included video footage that showed Tastanbekov standing in a crowd. Under Kazakhstan’s Criminal Procedure Code, the prosecutors are required to show the video to the defense in its entirety, but the clips used to convict Tastanbekov had been edited. According to Dolda, nowhere in the video is Tastanbekov seen attacking any buildings or police officers.

Additionally, investigators did not commission any expert analyses of the footage to prove that the person it shows is actually Tastanbekov. The BBC noted that he was initially charged with terrorism and attacking government structures as well but that those charges were ultimately dropped due to a lack of evidence.

Tastanbekov’s relatives do not believe he committed the crimes he was convicted of. According to his sister, Shynar, the prosecution’s evidence is self-contradictory; among other things, some materials say that Tastanbekov was killed on January 5 outside of the president’s residence in Almaty, while others say his body wasn’t found until January 7 and was in a different location. Shynar also said one investigator asked the family to sign a confession statement confirming that Tastanbekov took part in the protests. When they refused, according to Shynar, the investigator threatened them. Shynar maintains that her brother did not participate in any riots or seizures of government buildings but simply attended a peaceful protest to help the other demonstrators “convey the people’s desperation to the authorities.”

In January 2022, the Almaty authorities opened a criminal case over Tastanbekov’s murder, but his death was never investigated, his lawyer told the BBC. According to Dolda, in the first examination of Tastanbekov’s body, a police officer noted that he had a through-and-through gunshot wound and burn marks on his lower leg, but the burn isn’t mentioned in the official forensic report. Dolda believes his client may have died while being tortured, but the court did not take this possibility into account. Kazakhstan’s Prosecutor General has acknowledged that security officials tortured some people who were arrested in connection with the unrest, and a total of 203 criminal cases were opened over alleged instances of torture and abuse of authority. To this day, it’s unclear who fired at protesters.

International human rights organizations have called on the Kazakh authorities to conduct an independent investigation of the January unrest, but Kazakhstan’s president, Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, has maintained that involving international experts is unnecessary. As of June 2023, only 12 people had been charged in connection with protesters’ death, according to the BBC. According to human rights advocates, more than 40 cases opened over protesters’ deaths have been dismissed or classified.

Seven other people who were killed during the protests have been convicted of participating in mass protests in the city of Taraz. According to journalist Yesdaulet Kyzyrbekuly, none of the suspects’ parents believe the authorities’ account of their childrens’ deaths. One of the people convicted, Andrey Opushiev, was 17 years old when he died. He died from a bullet wound after being shot in the back, and his jaw, teeth, fingers, and left leg were broken. Despite his family’s pleas, the authorities have not investigated his death.