Kyrgyz President: Country’s citizens might have taken part in Kazakhstan protests

Bishkek, Jan 9 (UNI/Sputnik) Kyrgyz President Sadyr Japarov said on Sunday that he could not rule out the possibility that some Kyrgyz citizens may have taken part in protests in Kazakhstan over the past week.
Earlier in the day, Kazakh state-owned television showed a video of a man admitting in an interview that he arrived in Almaty last Sunday after agreeing to take an equivalent of $200 for joining a protest. An influential Kyrgyz businessman identified him on social media as Kyrgyz jazz music celebrity Vicram Rouzakhunov.
The Kyrgyz security services strongly denied that the musician was a terrorist and said that the participation of the country’s citizens in the unrest and looting in Kazakhstan was absolutely out of the question.
“There are many of our citizens working in Kazakhstan. Perhaps among them there were those who could take part in the protests,” Japarov wrote on Facebook.
At the same time, the president promised that the country’s authorities will “firmly fight for and protect all citizens that did not take part in the protests and are unfairly held accountable.” He noted that he is closely monitoring the situation with Rouzakhunov and gave orders to relevant ministries to resolve the issue as soon as possible.
A wave of protests swept across Kazakhstan earlier this week, following a sharp rise in gas prices. Despite the government’s attempts to quell the discontent and promises to bring the prices down, protests turned violent and descended into clashes with law enforcement officers in several regions.
Kazakh authorities have blamed violent protests on bandits and terrorists. The Kazakh presidency said that some 5,800 people had been arrested across the country by Sunday, and a large number of them were foreigners.