JOURNALISTS IN KAZAKHSTAN PRESS FOR MORE FREEDOM OF SPEECH

Quite recently a group of intellectuals, writers and journalists of Kazakhstan
addressed an open letter to the president of the country Nursultan Nazarbayev, in which
they express their growing concern about the repeated attempts of law-enforcement bodies
to limit the freedom of speech under invented pretexts. "Any media organization
trying to advocate its own view is put under pressure. The absurdity has already reached
the point when a court imposes a ban on a paper not earlier than a day before it comes out
of print without explaining reasons. To justify their arbitrary actions the
law-enforcement bodies give the necessity of safeguarding the information security of
Kazakhstan as an excuse, but this is not convincing’, according to the letter.

As authors of the letter point out, the concept of democracy is currently being
substituted by narrow interests of various business groups, influential government circles
who have concentrated in their hands significant influence over media and are now
manipulating public opinion. The journalists’ letter stresses that the time is ripe
to eliminate monopoly over the media, and that the process should be controlled by the
President personally as well as by parliament and the society. It proposes to simplify the
procedure for registration of new TV and radio channels, to reduce the amount of state
duties for broadcasting licenses, to provide journalists with access to information
sources, and to guarantee the rights of the citizens to express their opinions.

It is noteworthy that the letter signed by 32 people, among them by some editors of
provincial papers, appeared at a time that can best be described as a new wave of
information war involving well-known official figures. On October 19, a district court in
the capital city Almaty suspended the publication of the paper ‘Vremiya PO’
after the deputy chief of the national security committee filed a lawsuit against the
paper for printing articles damaging his reputation. The plaintiff demanded 10 million
Tenge from the paper as moral compensation. Nurlan Ablyazov, chief editor of the paper,
said at a press-conference that he was not going to back away from the idea of managing
his paper from abroad.

The article in ‘Vremiya PO’ provoked a heated debate in the parliament and
eventually led to the dismissal of the deputy chief of the national security committee
from his post. But the troubles of the English-Russian-language paper which have caused
the ire of the officials more than once apparently do not end with that.

Another source of irritation for the government turned out to be an Internet site,
Asiopa, registered in Russia. The scandal broke out when Asiopa in early October reported
corruption cases among the Kazakhstan’s leaders. The governor of the Pavlodar region
Zhakiyanov, the main pinpointed individual, was not slow to react. He appealed to the
Russian court and finally won a libel lawsuit. That was the first suit in Kazakhstan filed
against electronic media. However, it is too early for the authorities to celebrate a
victory in this never-ending media war.

Karim Sayid