Abstract
In January 2022, after a jump in gas prices, protests were held in several cities of Western Kazakhstan, later they were supported in more than 60 settlements. People put forward social, economic and political demands.
It is not known which forces decided to take advantage of the peaceful protest, but looters, provocateurs, and later armed persons appeared on the streets, seizing government institutions and the airport. Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, who holds the presidency, announced that 20,000 terrorists had attacked the country, and also gave the order to shoot to kill.
Hundreds of people died as a result of the shooting. At the same time, as a measure to suppress the riots, access to the Internet was cut off throughout the country.
This not only limited citizens' access to information about ongoing events, but also created a massive sense of fear. Shutting down the Internet has its own history in Kazakhstan, but before that, the shutdown was more of a way of censorship.
The events, which in Kazakhstan are called "Bloody January", bring the shutdown to a qualitatively new level. A combination of factors (the use of stun grenades, the order to shoot to kill, murders, the report of 20,000 terrorists, the introduction of CSTO troops) made the shutdown not an act of censorship, but an act of state terror.
Interestingly, the shutdown is practically not interpreted by anyone as a form of state terror. One can, for example, find the opinion of Simon Angus of Monash University, who called Myanmar's nighttime Internet blackouts a form of psychological terror, but so far this interpretation of the suppression of information has traditionally been interpreted as a form of censorship, and the damage from the shutdown is still considered a purely economic problem..
Today, however, a shutdown in the context of the so-called Internet of Bodies can be interpreted not only as a form of terror, but even as a form of torture.