Qazaqstan turali.

Nothing here yet.

[bakhtiyark-blog]

Rapid decline of non-Kazakh population in Kazakhstan since 1991.

For nearly twenty years after the collapse of USSR, Kazakhstan has been stated as one of the most prosperous and steadily growing new economies with booming energy sector, mining and rising GDP with nearly 7% growth each year from 91 to 2007. But sadly international media ignores many problems in Kazakhstan like crime, corruption, human right violations, extreme suicide rates, braindrain which led to huge decrease in the quality of services. In this post I'll focus a bit more on brain drain.

  According to demoscope, percentage of Kazakhs in 1989 was 39,6%, in 2009 it was almost 65%. Numbers of non-kazakhs decreased from 9million in 89 to 5,2million in 2009. Most of people left  Kazakhstan with a purpose to return to their historical motherland others left because of economic and social reasons.

Russians in Kazakhstan are significantly more likely to immigrate since they tend to be less sensitive with regards to patriotic bullshit such as "this is my homeland and I belong here". "Patriotism" is a major factor that stops Kazakh immigration, and those who do leave might be considered as traitors and selfish sons of bitches by some kazakhs(especially in traditionalist south areas). 

However, the number of Kazakhs abroad is increasing every year, with popular destinations such as Western Europe, Canada and the US. For instance, Germany has a large Kazakh diaspora with majority of people located in Berlin and Munich. Most of them are doctors that came to study in Germany (German language was one of the most popular foreign languages in 80-90's and was widely taught in rural schools, Germans were a prominent minority with their own cultural center, they had their own schools, newspapers etc.),  Kazakh government offered an opportunity to study there for free at the moment and these people decided to live there in mid-late 90's.  Before 90s the only way for kazakhs to immigrate from Kazakhstan to Germany was through crossing Turkmenistan-Iran border then moving to Turkey and there with a help of Turkish people they could finally move to Germany. 

Many of them miss home country but they realize that there is no future for them in Kazakhstan as a median salary for a doctor (in cities) is around 400 US dollars per month and half of it for provincial doctors. There is no way that the government could expect qualified doctors to work in Kazakhstan with such low wage rate.

All this has detrimental effects on Kazakhstan’s healthcare system. Poorly educated and corrupted doctors cannot provide adequate services, making doubtful prescriptions. In 2006 there was a huge uproar in the media as almost 200 newborns were infected with HIV via blood transfusion in Southern Kazakhstan.

[bakhtiyark-blog]

Shanyrak Riot in 2006.

Shanyrak - previously deserted area near Almaty was settled by kazakhs from rural areas in early 90s, seeking for a better future in Almaty they build mud huts and squatted abandoned barracks here since this densely-populated slum area  has become one of the most crime ridden areas in Kazakhstan. A lot of houses still don't have a basic utilities like running water and electricity problems are quite common thing here. There's only two schools here and both of them are extremely overcrowded with 3 to 4 thousands students each.

In 2005 Residents of Shanyrak were promised that if president Nursultan Nazarbayev would be re-elected in upcoming elections they will be able to legalize their land and administration will develop a proper infrastructure in the township.  Next year Almaty administration announced new residental area with shopping centers on the site of Shanyrak and ordered demolition of shacks. Resident of Shanyrak made barricades all around the township and prepared for fight with stones and molotov cocktails

In the end of July 2006 three hundred police officers attemped to remove barricades and arrest some of the resistance members, Police pushed back and were greeted with molotov cocktails, during the brawl three to five police officers were captured and crowd poured petrol on them and demanded to stop demolition. One of the police officers 24-years old who had suffered burns over roughly 70 percent of his body subsequently died on 26 July.

After failed attempt to evict residents then-Mayor of Almaty Imangali Tasmagambetov stopped slum clearance plan and promised that residents finally  would be able to legalize their houses and  announced  construction of  health care facilities around the township.

Despite all this even after five  years nothing has changed, there is still no roads, no water, rats and garbage all over the streets.

[bakhtiyark-blog]

Originally posted on my last.fm profile couple of years ago, basically it's a very, very brief interpretation of   what is really happening here and certain elements of it would be rewritten with more details.

This blog is designed to give an overview of some events happened/happening in Kazakhstan, where possible i provided source links.

A lot of people ask me "How are things in Kazakhstan" and i can say that they are horrible and could be so much better . Due to extreme corruption, no freedom of speech, our medieval mentality and so forth. If you work to local authorities or have a friends in government/police you can do whatever you want with no restraint, even killing people. There's a dozens of dodgy people in goverment including our dictator. He lives in a palace, drives lavish cars and plays golf with the equally dodgy friend of his(if you know whom i mean), while a lot people live in such gutter like this  and sometimes even struggle for living(notorious Shanyrak, brief history ↓), well maybe this guy a little exaggerated the situation but anyway most of people live in regular sovetique towns, bleak and desolate. He also has a two museums dedicted to him, one extremely lavish univercity providing so called "best education" in country, a lot of parks, streets schools are named after him and pictures of him are everywhere: in schools, offices, street banners and so forth. Doesn't this remind you of Joseph Stalin or Saddam Hussein? Our government spends a lot of tax payer's money to absolutely ridiculous stuff like personal BMWs and iPads(I'm sure that this idiots don't even know how to use it) for every Majilismen.

This is our new capital, one of the most hypocritical and senseless cities ive ever seen. The city itself is boring as hell and streets are deserted as if nuclear bomb blasted several hours ago. Also you can find horribly looking Auls(Villages) only 100 kilometres away from it, with no running water and maybe even electricity.

When Kyrgyzstan was on the verge of civil war in the summer of 2010 summer government did absolutely nothing to regulate the situation but closed the borders and pretended like everything is ok. In OSCE summit no one even mentioned it. Shanyrak is a shady town in Almaty, mainly populated with oralmans and kazakhs from cities like Shymkent, Arkalyk or rural areas. They live in illegally built mudhuts or in very old, dilapidated sovetique barracks.

 It's known for rampant crime and high levels of poverty. In 2006 administration decided to evict residents, demolish the unauthorized buildings and build luxury houses instead. When they finally came to destroy the slums residents of Shanyrak fighted back throwing stones and molotov cocktails. They captured a police officer and demanded to stop demolition, when they were refused they burned him alive. No wonder why Kazakhstan is one of the most depressed countries in the world and has one of the highest suicide rates per capita,"insanely high suicides rates among young people" and it's only the top of the iceberg. Kazakhstan holds third place worldwide in suicides ~3700 suicide attempts per year that's about 11 suicides each day and it shows no signs of slowdown.  Since January 2011 over 260 adolescents between 12 and 19 committed suicides but if it's not bad enough for you Kazakhstan also has sharply increasing crime rate(especially youth crime)  including extorting, carjacking, kidnapping(prominent in southern areas) and murder. There were 2500 murders in 2004 and once again shows no signs of slowdown. Kazakhstan suffered extreme brain drain since the collapse of USSR, 5m to 7million left the country in favor of much better opportunities in US, Canada, Western Europe. Why do so many people leave the country? Quite a silly question: poor quality of infrastructure(exc. for Almaty and Astana), horrible quality of service, crime, lack of jobs and ridiculously low wages, economic and ethnic marginalization and so forth. Population remains 15m because of kazakh rednecks who have over 6 children and immigration of kazakh oralmans(most of them are "farmers") from Mongolia, China, Uzbekistan.  

The only best thing about Kazakhstan is nature(Forests, canyons, valleys, mountains, sand deserts and endless steppes), unfortunately i don't have a lot of photos but you can check this guy for some very good photos of Kazakhstani nature. As you already noticed i have Major problems with English grammar, i hope you won't throw stones at me for this reason.

[bakhtiyark-blog]

Introducing myself

My name is Bakhtiyar(name of Iranic origin and means Cheerful, ironically i'm not quite a cheerful person). I was born 20 years ago in Alma-Ata(now named Almaty for unknown reason, there's no word Almaty in kazakh while Alma-Ata literally translates as Father of Apples), Kazakhstan. I like reading books(Hunter Thompson & Stephen King are my favourite writers), watching anime, playing tennis and exploring the cities. I dislike football and much prefer rugby instead, looking forward for world cup this year. I'm a vegetarian, many kazakhs find it quite bizarre. For the most part i speak russian, but i still can speak kazakh as well(Men toguz jyldai eskimmen söylegen jokpyn birak ali de qazaq tilin umutpadym. Qazirgi zamanda qazaq tilde cyrillic aripter koldanyladi, men latin aripterin qaitargandi unatamyn.), hope someday i'll learn german which i find very very beautiful, every single word sounds like a verdict, relentless as death itself.

I spent 16 years of mine living in Kazakhstan, It took a long time to realize that the world is the way better, i admire my uncle Erbolat, he was the only one who could understand me. I was 8years old when he took me to Germany and i can still remember that impression, since then I was able to travel around Europe with him.  Currently I stuck in Kazakhstan due to major events in my life and i have no opportunities to leave. Though most of my relatives live in Germany, Immigration laws there changed dramatically since 90s when they settled there without huge effort but now it's nothing like that anymore. So it might be Canada or Australia.