Kazakhstan

A court on April 21, 2014, ordered the closure of one of Kazakhstan’s few remaining independent newspapers, Human Rights Watch said today. The order compounds other measures in recent weeks to tighten controls over freedom of expression and the media. Kazakh authorities should immediately seek to set aside the court order prohibiting the Assandi Times from publishing. The Almaty court ruled that...

An independent paper, the Assandi Times, was suspended indefinitely in Kazakhstan on Tuesday, according to news reports. The Committee to Protect Journalists has condemned recent measures taken by Kazakh authorities to shut down independent news outlets in the country. Three court marshals in Almaty raided the offices of the Assandi Times and ordered the journalists to stop working, accusing the...

Natalya Sadykova, a regional correspondent for the independent Kazakh newspaper Assandi Times, fled with her family to Ukraine on March 9 after she was told by police sources that she could be arrested. On March 17, a regional court in the western city of Aktobe, issued an arrest warrant for Sadykova, news reports said. She has been accused of libel in connection with a story she has denied...

The shutdown order issued by a district court in Almaty against the independent weekly newspaper Pravdivaya Gazeta is yet another example of Kazakhstan's determination to gag independent voices in the country, the Committee to Protect Journalists said today, adding that the verdict should be overturned on appeal. The Bostandyk District Court ordered the news outlet to shut down on Monday, local...

A regional prosecutor in Uralsk, western Kazakhstan, has refused to investigate a threatening call against Alla Zlobina, a regional correspondent for the embattled independent weekly Golos Respubliki. Zlobina's daughter was also intimidated. New York-based press freedom group Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) called upon regional authorities to thoroughly probe the incidents and bring those...

New York-based press freedom group Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has called called on Kazakh authorities to immediately investigate the whereabouts of Daniyar Moldashev, director of ADP Ltd, publisher of the independent Almaty newspaper Respublika. Colleagues said Thursday that Moldashev had disappeared, days after being assaulted and shortly before the country's presidential election....

New York-based press freedom group Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has called on Kazakh authorities to thoroughly investigate journalism as a motive in the murder of Kyrgyz journalist Gennady Pavlyuk. Pavlyuk, better known by his pen name, Ibragim Rustambek, died in the hospital on December 22, 2009, after having been thrown from an upper-story window of an apartment building in Kazakhstan...

There are many shortcomings in the recent amendments to the Criminal Code of Kazakhstan related to defamation and insult. The Kazakh authorities have failed to fulfill their pledges to improve the legal framework for media and protect the right to freedom of expression as made prior and during its chairmanship of the Organization of Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), according to ARTICLE...

The Kazakhstan government is keeping journalist Ramazan Esergepov in prison in violation of the law and endangering his health. Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) said it was “a new attack on his rights” and showed he was being held for “political reasons.” Prison authorities refused for a third time, on January 27 this year, to free him despite his serious health...

There has been a wave of harassment of news media and journalists critical of a proposed referendum that would allow President Nursultan Nazarbayev, who has ruled since 1989, to continue in office until 2020 without having to run for reelection in 2012, according to Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF). “This attempt to perpetuate a dictatorial regime in flagrant...