Kazakhstan

On 7 August 2013, an Almaty court suspended Pravdivaya Gazeta newspaper for three months because of an alleged inconsistency it its data output.

Join the campaign to help move Kazakh poet Aron Atabek from solitary confinement, where he has been for two years for writing a book that criticises President Nazarbayev.

Poet Aron Atabek has been placed in solitary confinement for two years as punishment for writing a book that criticises President Nursultan Nazarbayev.

Four men have been sentenced to terms ranging from 11 to 15 years for carrying out a brutal attack on Kazakh journalist Lukpan Akhmedyarov in April 2012, according to news reports. Akhmedyarov told a local newspaper in April that he believed regional authorities had ordered the attack.

Aleksandr Kharlamov – who has written articles on world religion and atheism – was arrested on 14 March on charges of “inciting religious discord”. He was placed in a psychiatric clinic to determine whether he was clinically insane at the time of the alleged crime.

A blocked website; reporting equipment confiscated; a newsroom sealed; and reporters denied information from state agencies: these things together spelled the end of Stan.kz, a local, independent Internet-based broadcaster which for two years had tirelessly reported on developments in Kazakhstan.

Tokbergen Abiyev is safe and well after raising concerns about his disappearance on 20 December. The journalist has claimed that he staged his own disappearance, ahead of a planned press conference about corruption in Kazakhstan, in order to raise awareness about the issue both within the country and internationally.

Tokbergen Abiyev went missing the evening before a press conference at which he claimed he would reveal sensational information about corruption. The disappearance of Abiyev follows two cases in which Kazakh journalists were attacked in response to their work.

A year after clashes between striking oil workers and the police took place on Kazakhstan’s Independence Day on Zhanaozen’s central square, those who reported on the violence are still under threat, says Human Rights Watch.

The two main Kazakh opposition newspapers, Golos Respubliki and Vzglyad, have been forced to halt publication days after the prosecutor-general’s office announced it had asked an Almaty court to ban a number of independent and opposition national news outlets.

The ban on independent and opposition media is being sought on the grounds of alleged “extremist propaganda.” There has been a sharp increase in harassment of Kazakhstan’s main independent news sources in the period since the Zhanaozen riots of 2011.

The lengthy prison sentence handed to opposition leader Vladimir Kozlov highlights a free speech crackdown in Kazakhstan, says Human Rights Watch.

An appeal court in Oral, western Kazakhstan, has upheld a lower court ruling ordering Lukpan Akhmedyarov to pay 30,000 euros in damages to a local official.

Kazakh information minister Darkhan Mynbai has unveiled plans to drastically restrict the flow of information in emergencies.

Journalist Maksim Kartashov has said that an attack he suffered may be related to his reporting on alleged corruption in Kazakhstan’s ice hockey federation.

The Kazakhstan authorities must ensure that due process rights are respected in the trial of two political activists and an oil worker, says Human Rights Watch.