“I have no doubt that the authorities are behind this. And I don't even need to prove it. There is one proof - impunity. If these people are unpunished, then it will mean that they are protected by authorities," said Zhovtis at a press-conference.
He noted that such attacking groups have been used not for the first time.
“We have faced it not for the first time. At the end of the 90s there was a group of young people at the akimat, whose task was to express dissatisfaction with those who are dissatisfied with the Government. Except for the attack on Tuyakbay in Shymkent, they did not resort to violence before. The authorities used this, created an indignant public, but did not resort to violence. Recently, we have seen that the authorities have been applying violence. Unfortunately, our authorities have taken a certain path, which was well tested in Uzbekistan, when women appear, with whom you do not know how to behave, and then they attack. In Russia, these are young people; in Ukraine, they are “titushki”. The same situation has recently been in Kyrgyzstan - supposedly young patriots are attacking, ” he said.
In his words, it is a dangerous tendency.
“I want to draw attention of the whole society to the fact that this tendency is very dangerous - it creates hot spots with the threat of violence,” he said
In turn, public figure Baltash Tursumbayev compared the group of women who attacked the journalists with fascist punitive detachments, which were used in Germany before the start of the World War II.
The leader of the Akikat party, Yermurat Bapi, called specially trained provocateurs "black people."
"While yesterday the journalists of Azattyq and KazTAG were attacked, tomorrow all the people of Kazakhstan will be attacked. We saw black people at the protest actions, now they came to the press room to prevent the press conferences. We have black people with black intentions, so that there is no civil society," he said.
Photo source: picture from an open source