Dictatorship #3

The last person, and country, I will rant about is Nursultan Nazarbayev of Kazakhstan.

Once again one of those "One man, one vote, one time." guys. Nursultan took office in 1991 when Kazakhstan won independence from the Soviet Union. He has remained there ever since. Given the state they had departed from, it can't possibly come as a surprise that this country is dealing with a dictatorship.

Nursultan's last election in 2011, was actually won with a total of 95.54% of the votes. Do these people actually think I will believe this? I can't even fathom how his own citizens can believe these numbers. These people apparently use a technique called "directed democracy" in which they will either discredit or disqualify other parties against them by lying or making up some bogus law. The people then become scared and end up just voting for the same guy as before, mainly because they don't know any better.

Anyways, Nursultan was born in Chemolgan, a small town in former Soviet Union, into a very poor family. By 1962 he joined, and became a prominent member of, the "Young Communist League". He quickly moved up in ranks and by 1972 he became the secretary of the Communist party of some big shot league that is too long to try and read or pronounce.

His name became known through a LOT of controversy within seats of the Communist party, and he simply kept his sights set on the big picture. Everything that happened leading to his power lead to three days of riots known as the Jeltoqsan. Over all things weren't very pretty on this guys way up to the throne. On the 24, April 1990, Nursultan was elected the first ever president of Kazakhstan, winning 91.5% of the votes. Could that have been because nobody ran against him? Actually it was. He has remained in the same position ever since, and is still running the country today.

Kazakhstan has been accused of breaking quite a few human rights, mostly by the US but by other countries too. The list given by the US Department of State include some things like "severe limits on citizens' rights to change their government; an incident of unlawful deprivation of life; military hazing that led to deaths; detainee and prisoner abuse; unhealthy prison conditions; arbitrary arrest and detention, particularly of government opponents; lack of independent judiciary increased restrictions on freedom of speech, the press, assembly, and association" and a few others. To boot, this is a huge list of infractions.

Pretty much what this tells me is, citizens of Kazakhstan are almost forced into voting for Nursultan. If any person, especially another form of government, tries to rise above him he throws them in jail and tortures them for doing wrong in "the eyes of the country". These prisoners are beaten within inches of their lives, starved, and if you can think of worse, I'm sure that happens too.

Another thing I can gather is that people are forced into the military, and most likely trained to think in new ways. If they don't pick up on these customs, they're tortured until they catch on. They're is practice of "hazing" mentioned witch if you don't know what it is, it's when they make you go through intense training to join them.

Nobody is allowed to speak their free mind, nor are they free to even try and publish any of the things they find unjust. The people that try are thrown in jail and tortured as well.

So, Kazakhstan... not a nice place. Just on the single link to the US Department of State, there is about 2 hours of reading on what has happened to citizens and political people that have tried to overthrow their leader. The scary thing is, two of the three leaders mentioned are almost exactly the same. They rose to power by separating from a former country and have remained in power ever since. I wonder what Quebec is up to...