Kazakhstan

Heads of state and high-ranking officials representing 55 participating states of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) must urge the current OSCE chair, Kazakhstan, to make good on its press freedom commitments when they meet in Astana for a regional summit this week, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) said today. CPJ has repeatedly asked the OSCE to ensure that...

The judge for the Specialized Interdistrict Economic Court of Almaty, Gulnar Meyrzhanova, has dismissed the charges in a lawsuit filed against the independent Kazakh newspaper Central Asia Monitor for "protection of honour, dignity and business reputation". The judge on August 23 also ordered the release of the newspaper's seized property, Almaty-based press freedom group Adil Soz has reported. On...

A Kazakh journalist threw dung at the Almaty city court building on Monday to protest the court's rejection of her lawsuit against Prime Minister Karim Masimov and other politicians, RFE/RL's Kazakh Service reported. Zhanna Baytelova had filed a case against Masimov, Senate speaker Qasymzhomart Toqaev, and lower house speaker Oral Mukhamedzhanov in the Zhetysu district court for what she termed...

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has called on the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) to place Kazakhstan’s poor press freedom record on the agenda for its summit planned for later this year. Kazakhstan, the OSCE chair, is scheduled to host the summit in its capital, Astana. A meeting of the foreign ministers of the 56 OSCE member states at the Ak-Bulak resort...

Ramazan Yesergepov, the ailing imprisoned editor of the now-defunct independent newspaper Alma-Ata Info, is on a hunger-strike for the third consecutive day on Thursday in a penal colony in the southern Kazakh city of Taraz, according to the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). On June 25, Yesergepov announced his decision to go on hunger strike starting July 6 to protest his...

State-owned Internet service provider Kazakhtelecom has blocked access to the independent news portal Respublika and the website of its sister publication Respublika-Delovoye Obozreniye, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). Access to both news portals, which often criticise Kazakh authorities for corruption and human rights violations, has been blocked today for all clients of...

A court in the western city of Ural ordered on April 21 a local newspaper, Uralskaya Nedela (Ural Week) and one of its reporters, Lukpan Akhmedyarov, to pay 20 million tenges (136,000 dollars) in damages to an oil industry company, especially as the size of the award could force the weekly to close, according to Reporters sans Frontières (RSF). In an article headlined “Hidden invitations to tender...

Igor Larra, a correspondent for the Almaty-based independent weekly Svoboda Slova (Freedom of Speech), was attacked in the city of Aktobe that left him with a concussion and other head injuries, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has said. Larra (a pen name for the journalist Igor Kim) had extensively covered a strike by workers for the national oil producer KazMunayGas in the southwestern...

Kazakh authorities have banned the distribution of the independent weekly Respublika-Delovoye Obozreniye, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) said Tuesday. On March 1, the Medeu District Court in Almaty denied the weekly’s appeal and left in place a ban on the paper’s distribution that had been imposed in mid-February. The ban will remain in place until the newspaper pays 60 million Kazakh...

A court court in the Almaty district of Medeu rescinded the order it issued a week earlier banning all of the Kazakh media from publishing any information that could damage the reputation of President Nursultan Nazarbayev’s son-in-law, businessman Timur Kulibayev. The Medeu district court issued the ban on February 1 in response to the legal action which Kulibayev brought against four independent...