Page 8 Volume 22 Issue 3 2015 INTERNATIONAL union rights FOCUS ❐ SEVERE REPRESSION OF THE RIGHT TO STRIKE occurred during the strike in 2011. OzenMunaiGas carried out mass dismissals of workers following the start of their peaceful strike, the workers said. The authorities tried in one instance to break the peaceful strike using force, and imprisoned worker representatives following proceedings that did not respect fair trial standards. The labour dispute leading up to the strike at OzenMunaiGas began mid-May 2011 when approximately 22 OzenMunaiGas employees put forward demands to company management over calculation of their pay with a notice of intent to go on hunger strike in case their demands were not met. In response, OzenMunaiGas management informed the workers that their claims were ‘unfounded’. Ten days later, the workers began a hunger strike, and hundreds of other OzenMunaiGas employees downed their tools in support of their demands, launching a peaceful strike that would last the next seven months. In May, a local court found the strike illegal on grounds that workers had not adhered to regulations for holding a legal strike and because OzenMunaiGas is classified as a ‘hazardous production facility’. The right to strike, while not absolute, is one of the principal ways workers and unions may promote and defend their interests. Yet, Kazakh authorities unlawfully interfered with the workers ’ peaceful strike. In early July 2011, law enforcement officers forcefully dispersed striking OzenMunaiGas workers, including beating one oil worker in the legs with a nightstick. Despite this, workers at OzenMunaiGas persisted with their peaceful labour strike, relocating to the central square in Zhanaozen. In August 2011, a Zhanaozen court convicted Akzhanat Aminov, an oil worker who played an active role in defending workers’ rights for ‘organising an illegal gathering’ on grounds that he had led the strike by giving orders to workers by phone. He was sentenced to a one- year suspended sentence with two years of probation. The same month, Natalia Sokolova, a union lawyer who briefly consulted OzenMunaiGas workers on the calculation of their pay, was sentenced to six years in prison on charges of ‘inciting social discord’ after speaking to oil workers about wage disparities. She was later released. Nearly one thousand OzenMunaiGas employees were dismissed during the strike. There has been minimal accountability for the loss of life that occurred on 16 December, when the OzenMunaiGas strike was effectively brought to an end. While Human Rights Watch was not on the ground at the time to confirm independently how the unrest unfolded or who participated , in the immediate aftermath Human Rights Police used live ammunition on striking oil workers and others, killing at least 12 people and wounding others MIHRA RITTMANN is Central Asia researcher with Human Rights Watch in Bishkek O n 16 December 2011, police used live ammunition on oil workers and others in response to an outbreak of violence at the site of an extended strike in Kazakhstan’s oil-rich western region, killing 12 people. Oil workers had been on strike for approximately seven months, peacefully demanding higher wages from OzenMunaiGas, their employer, an oil production company in western Kazakhstan, and wholly-owned subsidiary of KazMunaiGas Exploration Production JSC. In the years since Kazakhstan gained independence , oil has fuelled the country’s vast economic growth. However, Human Rights Watch has found that repressive laws and abusive practices by the government and by some oil companies, both private and state-owned, have violated the labour rights of thousands of workers who do the difficult and often dangerous job of bringing Kazakhstan’s oil to market. On 16 December 2011, Kazakhstan’s Independence Day, scuffles broke out between police and striking oil workers and others in the central square of Zhanaozen, an oil town in western Kazakhstan. Soon after scuffles broke out, unidentified men in oil company jackets charged a stage set up for the independence day celebration . A December 16 statement from Kazakhstan’s prosecutor general’s office said that the people involved in the clashes that day ‘overturned the New Year’s tree, tore down yurts and the stage, and set a police bus on fire’. Over the course of the day, multiple buildings in Zhanaozen were set on...
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Jun 1, 2016
Fang-Yi Lo + 2
Open Access