Government: (no centralised leadership) Maks Bokaev Talgat Ayan Nursultan Nazarbayev Erbolat Dosaev Kalmukhanbet Kassymov Vladimir Zhumakanov The 2016 Protests against land reforms in Kazakhstan were a series of protests that were held in Kazakhstan against the new amendments to the Land Code, which began on 24 April 2016 in the city of Atyrau.
On 30 March 2016, Minister of National Economy, Erbolat Dosaev, announced that starting from 1 July, 1.7 million hectares of agricultural land would be put up for auction.
According to some Kazakh journalists, the boiling point was not the amendments to the Land Code, but the country's difficult economic situation due to declining oil prices and the devaluation of the tenge despite promises by President Nursultan Nazarbayev to fix the problems.
[4] On 20 April, in Astana, civil activist Galymbek Akulbekov held a single picket against the sale of land to foreigners, but he was soon detained by police.
[6] On the same day, in Oral, on Abai Square, a single picket was launched by Isatay Utepov, who was holding the poster “Қытайға жер сатпа!!
[22] On 1 May, President Nazarbayev spoke in Almaty with a festive speech, that without unity and stability, a political crisis similar to the Ukrainian one would be expected.
[23] Before the nationwide protests scheduled for May 21, the authorities did allow permissions in any city, and law enforcement agencies began arresting suspects in organizing and inciting unauthorized rallies.
[25] In the early morning of May 20, popular social networks like VKontakte, Facebook, Twitter, and instant messengers such as WhatsApp, Viber, as well as YouTube were inaccessible throughout Kazakhstan.
According to AsiaTerra, in Uzbekistan, on the website of the Russian BBC service, the section "Editor's Choice" was blocked, where an article about the events in Kazakhstan was published.
[28] On April 29, a coverage was shown on the First Channel, which stated that the organizers of the protests received monetary rewards in the amount of 50 to 150 dollars from foreign nations to each person who came to the rally.
After the broadcasts, social networks immediately responded, pointing to a weak evidence base of stories and the propaganda nature of the programs.