Kazakhstan’s government resigns as fuel protests rage

Why in news?

• Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev accepted the government’s resignation recently after a fuel price increase in the oil-producing Central Asian country triggered protests in which nearly 100 police were injured.

About the incident

• Police used tear gas and stun grenades to drive hundreds of protesters out of the main square in Almaty, the former Soviet republic’s biggest city.
• Clashes resumed after the Cabinet resigned.
• Atameken, Kazakhstan’s business lobby group, said its members were reporting cases of attacks on banks, stores and restaurants.
• Kazakhstan is a tightly controlled country which cultivates an image of political stability, helping it attract hundreds of billions of dollars of foreign investment in its oil and metals industries over three decades of independence.