The Almaty appeal court has been accused by press freedom groups of seeking to ruin an independent newspaper by imposing a fine that it and its journalists would find impossible to pay.
A case for defamation was brought by parliament deputy, Ramin Madinov, against the editor of the weekly newspaper Tasjargan, Bakyttoul Makimbai and a journalist, Almas Koucherbayev after it carried an article on April 24, 2008, headlined “the poor landowner”.
The deputy had asked the court for an apology and 300 million tenge (USD 2 million) in damages but on January 16, 2009, a district court set a fine of 3 million tenge (20,000 dollars) against the paper and the journalists, according to Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) and the Journalist in Danger foundation.
But at the February 26 appeal, the defence claimed the sum involved was unfair and disproportionate, given that neither the newspaper nor its journalists had sufficient funds to pay. This did not prevent the appeal court from setting compensation at 30 million tenge (USD 200,000).
Accusing the appeal court of raising the fine for the explicit purpose of destroying the popular paper, which sells 400,000 copies daily and opens its columns to the opposition, RSF said: “We are all the more appalled at the persistence of this kind of practice, since Kazakhstan is due to take over the presidency of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) from 2010”.
“While it is normal for defamation cases to be brought against the media, the fines should remain proportionate and not simply lead to the shutting down of a title. Otherwise, it is just a disguised form of censorship," the organisation concluded.
Tasjargan, which celebrated its tenth anniversary in 2008, has launched an appeal to its readership to help raise the money. But it is certain that this will not produce sufficient funds and the popular paper will be forced to close because of this judgment which will also condemn the journalist, Almas Koucherbayev to unemployment.
There has only been one precedent of a fine of this size in the history of the press in Kazakhstan. The country’s leading newspaper in the Kazakh language, DAT, was forced into closure in 1999, while its editor, Charip Kourakbayev, was banned from working for the media for many years.
