{"id":25495,"date":"2016-05-22T02:32:42","date_gmt":"2016-05-22T02:32:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/dozens-detained-in-kazakhstan-over-land-reform\/"},"modified":"2016-05-22T02:31:43","modified_gmt":"2016-05-22T02:31:43","slug":"dozens-detained-in-kazakhstan-over-land-reform","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/dozens-detained-in-kazakhstan-over-land-reform\/","title":{"rendered":"Dozens detained in Kazakhstan over land reform protests"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>{Police block protests in major cities over reforms the opposition says will lead to foreigners acquiring too much land.}<\/p>\n<p>Police have detained dozens of protesters in Kazakhstan during anti-government rallies in the country&#8217;s major cities, prosecutors said.<\/p>\n<p>Opposition activists had called for demonstrations in the Central Asian country&#8217;s largest cities, including Astana, Almaty and Karagandy, to protest a controversial proposal for land reforms that includes liberalising the sale and rental of farmland to foreigners.<\/p>\n<p>There are fears it could lead to Chinese farmers acquiring large swathes of land.<\/p>\n<p>Authorities had rejected all applications to hold protests on Saturday and cordoned off the main squares of Almaty and Astana, while activists called on their supporters to protest nonetheless.<\/p>\n<p>Kazakhstan&#8217;s deputy prosecutor general, Andrei Kravchenko, said that as of Saturday, 40 people had been arrested for organising and taking part in these unauthorised demonstrations, TASS news agency reported. <\/p>\n<p>Kravchenko said that the police force had worked to &#8220;prevent any violations of the law.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>A number of journalists were briefly detained during the protests. Kazakh police later said that the arrests had been a &#8220;misunderstanding&#8221;, Interfax news agency reported. <\/p>\n<p>In April demonstrators had taken to the streets in a string of provincial towns to protest proposed land reforms the government says are important to attract investment into the country.<\/p>\n<p>President Nursultan Nazarbayev earlier this month halted the proposal, saying that &#8220;doubts had arisen in society&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>A combination of inflation and falling real incomes have fuelled social discontent in a country often regarded as a regional success story despite endemic corruption.<\/p>\n<p>Kazakhstan&#8217;s tenge currency shed around half its value after the government abandoned a trading corridor with the dollar last year under pressure from low crude prices and Russia&#8217;s economic downturn. <\/p>\n<p>Land policy is highly politicised in ex-Soviet Central Asia where privatisation policies of the 1990s are often recalled with bitterness and where nearby China is seeking to expand its agricultural interests.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"spip-document spip-document-12381 aligncenter\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/jpg\/1da839fa4c1b485aa214a51da0e9ece1_18.jpg\" alt=\"Kazakhstan&#039;s deputy prosecutor general said police had worked to prevent any violations of the law \" \/><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>{Police block protests in major cities over reforms the opposition says will lead to foreigners acquiring too much land.} Police have detained dozens of protesters in Kazakhstan during anti-government rallies in the country&#8217;s major cities, prosecutors said. Opposition activists had called for demonstrations in the Central Asian country&#8217;s largest cities, including Astana, Almaty and Karagandy, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[101],"byline":[2474],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-25495","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics-48","tag-internationl","byline-al-jazeera"],"bylines":[{"id":2474,"name":"AL JAZEERA","slug":"al-jazeera","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":null}],"contributors":[{"id":2474,"name":"AL JAZEERA","slug":"al-jazeera","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":null}],"featured_image":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25495","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25495"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25495\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25495"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25495"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25495"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=25495"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=25495"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}