This is the moment Kazakh nursery tots re-enact the killing of a protester by Soviet soldiers during the December 1986 uprising as the country marks its 30th anniversary of independence.

The scene was re-enacted by nursery school children in the Kazakh city of Almaty, the scene of ‘Jeltoqsan’, a mass protest against Soviet occupation that took place between 16th and 19th December 1986.

The performance took place for Kazakhstan Independence Day, celebrated every 16th December. The country declared independence in 1991, days before the Soviet Union officially dissolved on 26th December.

Five years before independence, Almaty residents took to the streets in what was considered one of the first mass rallies in the Soviet Union, which was harshly suppressed by Russian soldiers.

Student Qairat Rysqulbekov, 22, whom the performance was based on, died in mysterious circumstances in prison in May 1988. He was posthumously awarded the title Hero of Kazakhstan after the country declared independence, and a monument was erected to him in the city of Semey.

In the footage, a boy playing a blindfolded prisoner is seen being taken into a Soviet official’s office and kneeling in front of him.

The Soviet official calls the prisoner “Protester” and duly declares for him to be taken away by two gun-toting soldiers.

The prisoner is then ‘executed’ by the soldiers as the video ends.

In real life, Rysqulbekov was found dead in his cell and suicide by hanging was ruled as the official cause of death despite many doubts from supporters at the time. His cellmate Leonid Vlasenko later claimed he killed Rysqulbekov on the orders of the Soviet Ministry of Internal Affairs.