Several unidentified assailants attacked Yermek Boltai, a reporter and editor for the website of the Kazakh service of the US government-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), in Kazakhstan's financial capital of Almaty on Sunday, the broadcaster reported. The assailants reportedly did not take any of the editor's valuables, including his money and cellphone.
The attackers hit Boltai with bottles and kicked him, and he was treated for a concussion, RFE/RL's Kazakh Service Director Yedige Magauin told New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). Boltai joined RFE/RL in May 2008 as a website editor and has mainly reported on social issues. Recently, he reported on social protests over the faltering economy in Almaty, Magauin said. Almaty police are investigating the attack, he said.
"We are shocked by the vicious beating of Yermek Boltai and call on Kazakh authorities to bring his assailants to justice," said CPJ Europe and Central Asia Programme Coordinator Nina Ognianova. "Authorities should thoroughly investigate the motives for this attack, including Boltai's journalism."
“We urge the authorities to shed light on this extremely grave attack on Boltay, which comes less than two weeks after the abusive arrest of Ramazan Esergepov,” Paris-based Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) said. “It is inconceivable that a government that does not defend press freedom should take over the presidency of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe in the near future.”
Boltai told CPJ he was attacked by five young men outside his apartment building at around 9 p.m. on Sunday. "They first asked for cigarettes, but I had none, and then they suddenly started beating me," Boltai said. When the journalist tried to escape, one of the assailants, he said, hit him with a bottle, and he received another heavy blow to his head from behind, RFE/RL reported. "I was able to get up after they hit me with a bottle, but they hit my head with another one." When Boltai collapsed, the attackers kept kicking him in the stomach and in the head, he told CPJ.
Esergepov, the editor of the weekly Alma Ata Info, was arrested by members of the National Security Committee (KNB) on January 6 at an Almaty hospital where he had been receiving treatment for cardiac problems and high blood pressure since December 25, RSF said. He is now been held by the KNB in the south of the country and has reportedly been mistreated.
The cases of Boltai and Esergepov bring the number of reports of harassment of journalists in Central Asia to four since the start of the month. Two contributors to RFE/RL’s Turkmen service, Dovletmurat Yazguliev and Osman Hallyev, reported two weeks ago that they had been subjected to threats and intimidation by local intelligence officers in neighbouring Turkmenistan. Ranked 125th out of 173 countries in the latest RSF press freedom index, Kazakhstan is due to take over the presidency of the OSCE in 2010.
