(RSF/IFEX) – RSF has voiced serious doubts concerning journalist Sergey Duvanov’s 28 October 2002 arrest on a rape charge in Kazakhstan. He has been accused of raping a 14-year-old girl. Duvanov is editor-in-chief of “Bulletin”, a magazine published by the Kazakhstan International Bureau for Human Rights, and is regarded as one of the country’s most […]
(RSF/IFEX) – RSF has voiced serious doubts concerning journalist Sergey Duvanov’s 28 October 2002 arrest on a rape charge in Kazakhstan. He has been accused of raping a 14-year-old girl. Duvanov is editor-in-chief of “Bulletin”, a magazine published by the Kazakhstan International Bureau for Human Rights, and is regarded as one of the country’s most outspoken opposition journalists.
“As Duvanov has been the target of harassment in the past and given the press freedom situation in Kazakhstan, we have a right to doubt that there are any grounds for this rape charge,” RSF Secretary-General Robert Ménard said in a letter to Justice Minister Georgy Kim. “If you are unable to produce irrefutable evidence of Duvanov’s guilt, we will view this as one more case of intimidation of opposition journalists in your country,” Ménard said, while calling for the charge to be investigated “with the utmost transparency.”
Duvanov has often denounced the Kazakh authorities for their harassment of opposition and independent news media, and already faces judicial proceedings on a charge of violating President Nursultan Nazarbayev’s honour and dignity. On 28 August, he was seriously wounded in an attack by three unidentified assailants (see IFEX alert of 30 August 2002).
An RSF representative met Duvanov several times in the course of a fact-finding mission to the Kazakh capital of Almaty in July. Duvanov described the various forms of intimidation and judicial harassment to which he had been subjected by the authorities. He also voiced fear that the authorities would trump up some kind of sex or drug charge against him. “I am still free and in good health, but that may not last,” he said at the time.
Human rights organisations and opposition journalists claim that the Kazakh secret services often try to implicate opposition politicians in scandals in order to intimidate or blackmail them.
Political journalist Artur Platonov, of the independent television station KTK, was the victim of a violent assault in Almaty on 16 August (see IFEX alert of 19 August 2002). On 21 June, the daughter of Lira Bayseitova, the editor of the opposition weekly “Respublika”, died in suspicious circumstances while in police custody (see IFEX alerts of 29 August and 2 July 2002). No one has been charged in either incident.
