Activists in Kazakhstan have made a spoof video clip purporting to show a human sacrifice appealing to the “forces of darkness” to grant President Nursultan Nazarbayev eternal life.
The tongue-in-cheek video, which was filmed by a group calling itself the “Obedient Herd” and has been posted on YouTube, shows a group of people dressed in Ku Klux Klan-esque tall white hats and long white cloaks marching through a field carrying portraits of Nazarbayev to solemn background music.
They set the portraits against a tree. One of them is sacrificed with a knife, as text flashes up on the screen: “In the run-up to the 70th birthday of the leader of their nation, the devoted sheep have carried out a sacrificial ritual. The groveling herd has appealed to the forces of darkness with a request to grant our Great Leader immortality.”
This is a humorous take on a controversial new law granting Nazarbayev – who celebrates his 70th birthday on July 6 – the title of “leader of the nation” with accompanying extra powers.
As pressure mounts on civil society in Kazakhstan, humor is becoming an alternative means for protest. Performance artist Kanat Ibragimov, for example, is becoming well-known for his tongue-in-cheek actions. He gate-crashed this April’s Eurasian Media Forum – brainchild of the president’s daughter, Dariga Nazarbayeva – to distribute leaflets while fellow artist Aynur Saydenova played La Marseillaise on a violin. Ibragimov’s leaflets bore a concise message: “kop soz, bok soz,” which loosely translates from Kazakh as “lots of words, lots of excrement.”
“We don’t belong to any party and we’re not making any political statements – only that there’s too much talk and too little action,” he told me at the time.
Ibragimov’s performances have included chopping up a fish on Almaty’s Republic Square to symbolize the proverb “a fish rots from the head down,” and decapitating a toy panda in protest at plans to lease land to China.
Times may be tough for those wishing to get a political message across, but at least they haven’t lost their sense of humor.
Joanna Lillis is a journalist based in Almaty and author of Dark Shadows: Inside the Secret World of Kazakhstan.
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