It is easy to poke holes in the Kazakh government’s official narrative, even as it continues to choke communications with the outside world.
As Kazakhstan battles its way out of a bloody weeklong crisis, the authorities are working hard to push their own story about the unrest that has to date claimed dozens of lives.
While they did so, on January 9, the internet remained down in the commercial capital, Almaty, depriving people there of the chance to tell their own side of the story.
In an English-language video message posted online, Foreign Minister Erzhan Kazykhan acknowledged that the roots of the trouble lay in what he termed “peaceful demonstrations” triggered by a rise in car fuel prices. But those protests were later hijacked by “local and foreign terrorist groups,” Kazykhan said.
