Ainur has begun a hunger strike and made an appeal against the sentence. The arrest of this journalist is a sign of the regime’s nervousness faced with the growth of the protest movements and the fear created by the popular insurrection which overthrew the regime in the neighboring state of Kyrgyzstan. In Kazakhstan, the workers will no longer accept the creation of a new middle-class from the old apparatus of the bureaucratic State and enterprise managements. Ten thousand oilworkers were on strike, from March 4th to 19th, for wage demands, the sacking of the directors and the nationalization of their company under workers’ control.