At the end of May, it emerged that certain independent environmentalists, with the help of activists calling themselves residents of the village of Maraldy, are demanding not only the closure of a gold processing plant in the Kurchum district of the East Kazakhstan region, but also the dismissal of the regional governor.
In August last year, local residents in the village of Maraldy began to actively protest against the construction of the plant and the operation of a gold mine.
Despite the obvious prospects for the local population, the villagers were categorically opposed to the development of new industrial facilities in their settlement, justifying their stance by citing impending environmental problems.
Visiting activists claimed that the plant was situated next to the Maraldy River, which they argued could later have a negative impact on the health of local residents and a unique nature reserve.
However, the competent authorities have repeatedly checked not only the legality of the plant's location but also the existence of a nature reserve, which, it turned out, neither exists nor ever existed in the area in question.
Now, a little-known "Association of Practicing Environmentalists" has sent appeals to the President and the Prosecutor General requesting the dismissal of the EKR governor, Yermek Kosherbayev, on the grounds that he has allegedly taken no measures to protect the environment in the Kurchum district.
The authors are convinced that the cyanide mixture to be used for gold extraction will cause damage to the region.
Furthermore, they insist on the need to revoke the state environmental expert review conclusion due to the alleged unreliability of the data provided in the construction project.
It follows that if certain "environmentalist-activists" manage to overturn the decision of the state expert review, it would undermine its significance and the conclusions of qualified experts.
Otherwise, if the expert review results are not overturned, the question arises: who stands to benefit from such protests, and for what purpose?
Earlier, we suggested that the "practicing environmentalists" had deliberately turned the villagers against the construction of the plant.
Even at the initial hearings, instances of incitement of the population by capital city activists were observed, and later one speaker even demanded that investors pay local residents 20 million tenge each.
The editorial board of FBRK has repeatedly warned about the dangers of public hearings and how they sometimes end. We assumed that interested parties were using the population for their own selfish ends.
For instance, in August 2023 in the settlement of Ulken in the Almaty region, public hearings were held on the construction of a nuclear power plant on Lake Balkhash, but no decisions could be made due to scuffles started by meeting participants.
It is worth noting that the meeting in Ulken was attended not only by residents and civil activists, but also by so-called environmental defenders.
And this is far from the first time that public hearings have ended on a negative note. Similar situations occurred in the village of Karautkel in the Akmola region, and in the previously mentioned settlement of Maraldy, where events still ended in brawls.
In recent years, rallies and public hearings in Kazakhstan have become a platform for populist statements for some, where certain individuals try to gain symbolic capital from so-called hype.
For others, they serve as a powerful tool with which certain forces remaining in the shadows attempt to achieve their own objectives.
The saddest part is that ordinary people are most often used blindly, with their emotions being skilfully manipulated and negative reactions deliberately provoked in a specific direction.
Only, the consequences of these mass protests more often than not not only fail to bring tangible benefits to the people but actually harm them and their families, as well as the future development of the settlements where they live.