Issue and Opponent: Nursultan Nazarbayev is the only president Kazakhstan knew for a long time, taking office in 1990 before the Central Asian country declared independence from the Soviet Union a year later. In Kazakhstan, the government aggressively regulates peaceful assembly and punishes those who dare to break its strict rules. Activists demanded fair, independent elections. In April 2019, artist Roman Zakharov hung a banner over a highway in central Almaty, that reads “The people shall be the only source of governmental power”. Police arrested Zakharov and charged him with hooliganism for littering in public.
Dilemma Action: To test the authorities, on May 6, 2019, Aslan Sagutdinov, in response to the arrests of Aszhanova, took to the main square in Uralsk carrying only a blank placard, not shouting any slogans or doing anything else, to demonstrate how widespread and absurd the repression is. He was hauled away and arrested by police, with the event covered by the media and posted online, which led to viral responses. He was released later that day because the police could not decide what to charge him with. It led activist Zhanbota Alzhanova to post a photo days later on Facebook in which she and a friend posed in a parody, pretending to hold up an invisible poster. She too was arrested.
Outcome: Collectively, these events received thousands of interactions and have produced similar movements using online activism. By posting photos of violent reactions to nonviolent action, translating court proceedings into English, and criticizing government control over the internet, Kazakhstani activists have been able to get the attention of outsiders. In the government’s attempt to silence critics, they inspired an iterative progression of creative demonstrations beyond social media. Artists started tagging buildings with graffiti, sporting homemade T-shirts, and writing songs that draw inspiration from the banners displayed in Almaty.