(RSF/IFEX) – On 19 April 2003, RSF protested the attack on newspaper editor Maxim Yeroshin, which came a few days after he denounced corruption by President Nursultan Nazarbayev and his aides. Yeroshin, the founder and editor of the opposition newspaper “Rabat”, was attacked and beaten up by thugs near his home in the southern town […]
(RSF/IFEX) – On 19 April 2003, RSF protested the attack on newspaper editor Maxim Yeroshin, which came a few days after he denounced corruption by President Nursultan Nazarbayev and his aides.
Yeroshin, the founder and editor of the opposition newspaper “Rabat”, was attacked and beaten up by thugs near his home in the southern town of Shimkent during the night of 16 April. He was hospitalised with multiple head injuries.
“Yeroshin is the third journalist to have been physically attacked in the last eight months, each time after they criticised the government,” said RSF Secretary-General Robert Ménard. “This is very disturbing. We call on the authorities to thoroughly investigate the attack and punish those responsible. There used to be more press freedom in Kazakhstan than in other Central Asian countries, but it has become increasingly dangerous to work as a journalist in the country,” Ménard added.
Yeroshin’s colleagues said he was probably attacked because of an article about luxury villas that the president and other top officials are building illegally inside the country’s nature reserves. The contentious article was published in the newspaper’s 10 April edition. Yeroshin himself said, “Look in the paper and see who stands out among those mentioned.”
On 16 August 2002, Artur Platonov, the co-producer and presenter of “Portret nedely”, independent television station KTK’s main political programme, was attacked by three thugs in front of his home in Almaty (see IFEX alert of 19 August 2002).
On 28 August, journalist and human rights activist Sergei Duvanov, editor of the opposition magazine “Bulletin”, published by the International Bureau for Human Rights, was beaten up by three thugs while on his way home (see alert of 30 August 2002). Duvanov, who is also a leading government critic, suffered serious injuries in the attack. On 11 March 2003, he was sentenced to three and a half years’ imprisonment for the alleged rape of a minor, after a trial in which the right of defence was frequently violated and a prior investigation was marred by many irregularities (see alerts of 11 and 4 March, 31 and 29 January 2003, 11 November, 30 and 28 October 2002).
