“The dog got out and tramped on the seedlings in the greenhouse that had been planted by my parents and tore up the plastic sheets,” Zhumatayev said. The original incident was filmed by Zhumatayev’s acquaintance and was then shared online. His voice breaking, Talgat Mukashev said that what his son had done was an accident.Įarlier this month, a man from Atyrau, Margulan Zhumatayev, delivered a video apology for trying and failing (he claims) to strangle a dog with by clamping its neck in a fridge door. In May, the father of an off-duty police officer who fatally ran over two fellow policemen at a checkpoint into Almaty begged Kazakh citizens for forgiveness for his son. Grimmer episodes occurred in the months that followed. A humble apology followed shortly after: “I ask you to forgive me ladies and gentlemen." The YouTube channel, which collates Interior Ministry-produced videos, is a veritable treasure trove of such forced appeals. One Almaty resident, identified by police only by the initial D., thought to make light of the situation by claiming that he had become infected and that he intended to commit suicide by shooting himself. Things got more serious in March, as Kazakhstan started to battle its coronavirus outbreak. In one typical video from this series, singer Aikyn Tolepbergen said he was deeply sorry if “somebody had really trusted what I said and went and invested their precious savings.”Ī post shared by Aikyn Tolepbergen on at 4:25am PST In February, a group of celebrities, including singers, actors, and social media influencers, filmed appeals to the public apologizing for promoting the services of what turned out to be a pyramid scheme. But that is not always the case.īarely a month seems to pass in Kazakhstan without somebody groveling for forgiveness on video.
Often, there is a pretense of the repentance being voluntary. The modern struggle session requires the offender to deliver an apology or recantation into a camera for footage that is then uploaded to social media or video-sharing platforms. Mao Zedong’s China used the struggle session to drill ideological certainties into its population.Ĭlass enemies would be forced to kneel before crowds, declaiming their guilt for some perceived transgression while an assembled crowd pelted them with abuse.Ī practice with similar undertones – albeit with a high-tech twist – has become commonplace in parts of the former Soviet Union, and especially so in Central Asia. He admitted to involvement in bribe-taking and embezzlement. Former Turkmen Interior Minister Isgender Mulikov, who had been fired some weeks before, appeared on national television news in handcuffs, black prison garb and with his head shaven.