(Adil Soz/IFEX) – The 20 May 2005 edition of “Set KZ” newspaper, the successor paper to the recently closed “Respublika Delovoye Obozreniye” (“Republic Business Review”) newspaper, was confiscated. Early in the morning on 20 May, traffic police in Almaty stopped the car that was delivering copies of “Set KZ” to vendors. Refusing to identify themselves, […]
(Adil Soz/IFEX) – The 20 May 2005 edition of “Set KZ” newspaper, the successor paper to the recently closed “Respublika Delovoye Obozreniye” (“Republic Business Review”) newspaper, was confiscated.
Early in the morning on 20 May, traffic police in Almaty stopped the car that was delivering copies of “Set KZ” to vendors. Refusing to identify themselves, uniformed police officers and people in civilian clothes confiscated 1,000 copies of the paper.
One hour after the incident, officers of the District Department of Internal Affairs delivered a copy of a letter to the paper’s editorial office. The letter, dated April 2004, was from the deputy chairman of the Culture, Information and Sport Ministry’s Information and Archives Committee and was addressed to the director of the Vremya-print printing house, which prints “Set KZ”. The letter said that “Set KZ” newspaper’s registration had expired.
The owner of “Set KZ” had not been informed previously that the paper’s registration had expired.
According to Kazakhstan’s Law on the Mass Media, a newspaper’s registration lapses if within the first six months of its registration no issue is published. “Set KZ” newspaper’s first and only previous edition was published on 17 September 2003, well within the six-month period since the paper’s registration date. The paper’s lawyers believe there is no legal cause for the registration of “Set KZ” to have lapsed.
The editorial board of “Respublika Delovoye Obozreniye” newspaper began publishing under the name “Set KZ” after the paper, often critical of the authorities in Kazakhstan, was closed on 4 May 2005 (see IFEX alerts of 11 and 10 May, 29 and 24 March 2005).
