On 16 December 2011, police opened fire on unarmed citizens of Zhanaozen in western Kazakhstan. The victims included oil workers who were on strike, and innocent passers-by. The authorities of Mangistau region said the police had begun shooting “in self defence” – until videos appeared on the internet showing how people ran from armed men in uniform, who were shooting to kill.

According to official data, 16 people died and roughly 100 were injured. Zhanaozen residents and human rights defenders said that the number of victims may have been several times greater. But a state of emergency was immediately declared in the city, and then hundreds of men of all ages were detained and beaten by police. Thirty seven people, including participants in the oil workers’ strike, were tried and sentenced to time in jail or to suspended sentences. Five police officers, and the director of the detention centre where people were tortured, were also tried for exceeding their legal powers.

Two years after the Zhanaozen tragedy, Galym Ageleuov, a Kazakh political analyst and human rights defender, made a film about the events of 16 December 2011 and what followed. City residents and the families of those convicted talked to Ageleuov, since he had travelled to Zhanaozen and written about the strike even before the massacre.

In an interview with Current Time - translated with permission by People and Nature, Ageleuov explained how an industrial dispute turned into a hopeless strike and demonstration on the town square, what happened on the day of the tragedy, and why people who began by fighting for an honest day’s pay for an honest day’s work ended up fearing journalists and the police.

Why the oil workers struck. Events before 16 December

Please tell us about the oil workers’ strike. What was its character? What demands were made?

The strike began in the spring of 2011 at Ersai, at Ersai Caspian Contractor, a firm linked to an Italian company. The latter supplied and repaired equipment for the oil producers. The workforce of about 1,000 people went on strike. In solidarity with that strike, another strike started in Aktau, at Karazhanbasmunai.

Karazhanbasmunai is the main company on which Aktau’s economy depends. They operate a large number of oilfields in Mangistau region. The oil workers demonstrated in front of the head office, demanding a pay rise and fair working conditions. The point is that, at one time, Karazhanbasmunai was Canadian owned; then the authorities sold a 50% share to a Chinese company. A Chinese director was appointed, and this had an effect on the immediate climate of [labour] relations.

But even before that, in 2009-2010, there had been strikes. Some of the trade union leaders had been beaten up, and there had even been an arson attack on the home of one of the leaders of the Karazhanbasmunai trade union committee. So in 2011 they supported Ersai. And then the workers at Ozenmunaigaz also came out in solidarity. This is a huge enterprise for Zhanaozen, roughly 12,000 employees. And they raised a strike in Zhanaozen.

The workers gathered at OS-5 – a facility to which oil is sent by pipeline – and picketed it until they were dispersed, with the help of the OMON riot police, at the start of June [2011]. Demonstrators were beaten and detained by the police. When oil workers’ wives went to the men’s defence, they were also beaten. I interviewed these women who had gone to the police stations to find out what had happened to their husbands. I have a video that shows their cuts and bruises. The state forces tried their very best to terrorise the strikers and their families; they acted as the strong arm of the company bosses.

After that the workers started a hunger strike on the premises of Karazhanbasmunai and Ozenmunaigaz. They refused food, and demanded a conciliatory procedure, in which representatives of the employers and the strikers would sit round the negotiating table as equals.

The strikers were not in an aggressive mood at the start?

No. There was no aggression from their side. On the contrary, it was the authorities who were turning the screws on them. At Karazhanbasmunai, the whole workforce at a general meeting took a vote of no confidence in the previous [trade union] leader, due to some financial irregularities. They voted in Natalia Sokolova to head the trade union committee. She spoke at a general meeting of workers from all the oil fields and the head office, about [the employers’] breaches of the labour code, about how workers’ pay was being cut. She said that promises made in 2009 by the deputy prime minister, then Karim Masimov, that pay would be brought to the Minimum Pay Standard [MSOT] – that is, the national minimum plus 70-80% for oil industry weighting and regional weighting – had not been kept. She spoke about how the system set up by the wages offices meant that workers were receiving less than their due.

Then they refused to pay bonuses in that year, under a mass of pretexts. There were so many problems at Ozenmunaigaz. For example, they compelled workers to buy protective clothing, which was supposed to be provided free of charge. Somebody was making a living out of sewing these garments and selling them to workers. Workers were not being supplied with the most elementary things: protective gloves, milk, whatever.

So the whole thing was about pay?

The starting-point was pay, for sure. But then, when the employers dug in, refused to consider conciliatory procedures, undertook repressive actions, the strike took on a political character. Because they started arresting the workers’ leaders.

Natalia Sokolova herself went to the prosecutor’s office, and demanded from the prosecutors and police that they go to the previous head of the trade union committee, and take from him the official stamp, because that was the decision of the general meeting [that she was elected to replace him]. [Note. It is difficult, or impossible, for organisations to perform their functions legally in Kazakhstan without their official stamp.] But instead of implementing the workforce’s decision, the police arrested Natalia and detained her for eight days. And then, without her being released from the temporary detention centre, Natalia was jailed for six years on the same charges. Although any lawyer will tell you that you can not serve two sentences – in this case, eight days and six years – for the same crime. [Note. Natalia Sokolova was jailed in August 2011 for “inciting social discord”. She was released in March 2012, after admitting her guilt.]

Is it correct that there was a definite point beyond which the clash between the strikers and the company management could no longer be described as an industrial dispute? In the sense that the oil workers quit the ruling party Nur Otan and that representatives of the political opposition visited Zhanaozen?

In April [2011], when all three companies were on strike, the employers took a case to court, and straightaway received a judgment that the strike was unlawful. The employers brought the court decision and told the strikers: you are outside the law. So all the workers’ completely legal demands were rejected by the employers. It was they, the employers, who opted for violence, who would not agree to conciliatory procedures or negotiate. They just started piling on the pressure. Strikers were simply detained, held under arrest and jailed for the tiniest misdemeanours.

For example Natalia Azhigalieva [one of the strike organisers] gave an interview to journalists from Radio Azattyk who visited Zhanaozen. The interview was put out the next day, and Natalia was arrested and jailed for 15 days for no reason.

People went to Alan square [in the centre of Zhanaozen]. The workers of OS-5 were attacked by the OMON riot police at the beginning of July [2011], and were compelled to go on to the central square. And they lived there from morning until night. And even stayed there overnight, with their families, with their children.

At the start this was about 5,000 people. Then the numbers dropped: they were there for eight months. The whole town lived this way: those on the square were supported, people showed solidarity. Because a man on the square might have a family of twelve, all without work – and he was the only breadwinner. So they lived on their nerves, without a penny. And people were ready to take radical actions. That’s how the strike was politicised.

Then they took the decision to quit Nur Otan en masse. They went to the Nur Otan office and demanded, or simply told them, that they were leaving the party. The thing is that Zhanaozen lives entirely on the back of Ozenmunaigaz. This city was a tent settlement; then it grew; it became a city of 130,000-140,000 inhabitants. But the infrastructure stayed the same. The money was looted from the city’s budgets. All the Akims [mayors] that held office were concerned only with their personal interests. For example, all the money that was transferred from Ozenmunaigaz [to the city administration] for the city’s social development disappeared into a network of NGOs that no-one had ever heard of. Big sums of money went that way, and ended up in the hands of the self-same officials and bureaucrats who ran the city.

In terms of pay, they had one amount above-board – 150,000-170,000 tenge – but in the departments that answered to Astana [the Kazakh capital], they were getting 400,000. More than twice as much. So all sorts of money was disappearing on the side.

You mentioned pressure being put on strikers and their families. What sort of pressure?

Well, for example, in 2010-2011 oil workers were getting beaten up. One of the trade union leaders, Zhaksylyk Turbaev, was killed. He was murdered in a portacabin at his workplace. It was especially brutal: he was beaten with steel bars and wooden staves. There was blood all over the place. The police just turned a blind eye; they didn’t find the perpetrators.

Then there was the case of Zhansaule Karabalaeva, the daughter of one of the especially well-known oil workers. Her dad was not one of the official trade union committee leaders, but he was well known at Ozenmunaigaz. His daughter was raped and murdered. She was forced into a car; they said, it’s a taxi, you’re going to the military base. Then they took her out to the steppe, where no-one could see, and killed her. Her funeral made an impact on the strikers.

Abai Abenov was a man who could not bear the strain of the eight months of strike action, and hung himself.

There may have been other cases. I am telling you about the ones I know about.

All this added to the sense of outrage at the actions of the police, of the criminals, and of all the official state structures who should have been sorting things out.

16 December. What happened on the square

What happened on the square in Zhanaozen on 16 December 2011? How did the disorder start? The strikers began to damage equipment and set fire to buildings. What happened?

It’s wrong to say that this was the oil workers. It was the Independence Day holiday, a city festival. The city authorities invited everyone to Alan square, and about 5,000 people gathered there. The headmasters brought school pupils, the technical colleges brought their students. There was a huge crowd on the square, everyone from school pupils to old age pensioners, who had come to mark Independence Day.

The oil workers had been occupying a part of Alan square. And as the celebration was being prepared, it seemed clear that a provocation was being prepared. In the days prior to the incident, the oil workers asked the Akim of the city about this. There is a video of the Akim promising categorically that nothing is going to happen, that there would be no provocation.

But for a month beforehand groups of OMON [riot police], armed to the teeth, were brought to Zhanaozen from Aktau. They had been there for a month, working out how to break the strike.

It was thought that there were provocateurs on the square. Who were they?

If we look, at least, to the level of the security forces, there was a definite plan to discredit those who were on strike. And for this they invited organised crime groups. I can not confirm for sure what happened, but I received information that these groups were brought from nearby regions. For example, from Atyrau. I have been told that, after the whole thing was over, a load of Ozenmunaigaz work overalls [that provocateurs had put on, on the square] were dumped somewhere in Atyrau.

There was talk of men dressed in black on the square.

There were men in black. If you look at the video evidence, these men raised a white flag, and the police did not fire at them. Naturally, there was some sort of worked-out plan. What’s more, there were snipers on all sides. There was a unit of 100 armed officers who shot at all the people in the square. For 20-30 minutes, they fired continuously at people.