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KAZAKHSTAN 115
police officer was found guilty of organizing and carrying out the contract killing with assistance from the KNB’s elite
Arystan special unit officers (RFE/RL, 2006a; 2006b; 2008). In November 2005, another leading opposition figure—
Zamanbek Nurkadilov—was found shot dead in his home. Despite two gunshot wounds to the chest and one to the
head, the police officially ruled his death to be a suicide, claiming that no signs of a forced entry had been detected
(RFE/RL, 2005).
Ethnic violence
Despite the absence of large-scale ethnic strife in Kazakhstan, security agencies organized robust interventions to
suppress a number of localized clashes between ethnic Kazakhs and minority groups. 9 In March 2007, for example,
a minor brawl during a game of billiards erupted into a violent shoot-out between ethnic Kazakhs and Chechens in
the villages of Malovodnoye and Kazatkom, in Almaty Oblast. The incident resulted in the death of five people, with
several others wounded. The authorities managed to stop the violence only after bringing in special police forces,
and the area remained cordoned off for several weeks to ensure that order was fully restored. Reports circulated in
the press that armed people from other regions of the country intended to come to the scene of these events but
were stopped by the police (RFE/RL, 2007;
Saydullin, 2007a).
There were also allegations that firearms
were used in Mayatas and other villages of
the Southern Kazakhstan Oblast when the
Kazakh population burned down houses
and the property of local Kurds after the
arrest of a 16-year-old Kurd suspected of
raping a four-year-old Kazakh boy in late
October 2007. According to press reports, up
to 500 law enforcement personnel were
involved in restoring order, and three policemen
were injured during the operation
(Dzhani, 2007; Saydullin, 2007b; IWPR, 2007).
Terrorist violence
While the revival of Islam in Kazakhstan in
the 1990s did not lead to a large-scale emergence
of radical religious organizations, some
extremist groups have intensified their activities
in the country. 10 Compared to the late
1990s and early 2000s, when the majority of
criminal cases related to religious extremism
People gather for the funeral of opposition figure
Zamanbek Nurkadilov, found shot dead in his home,
Almaty, November 2005. © Pavel Mikheev/Reuters