A court in the southern city of Taraz has upheld independent newspaper owner and editor Ramazan Esergepov’s three-year jail term and two-year publishing ban, Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has reported. The sentence was confirmed at a secret hearing on October 22 which, like his original trial, was marked by irregularities.
Except for the first 15 minutes, the appeal hearing was conducted behind closed doors and in Esergepov’s absence. Although Esergepov had disowned his defence attorney, the lawyer nonetheless spoke at the hearing as if he was still empowered to represent him.
“This appeal ruling shows that the Kazakh authorities are bent on silencing all their media critics,” Paris-based RSF said. “Kazakhstan will take over the rotating presidency of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) in just two months, yet it is clearly still more dangerous to expose bribery and corruption in this country than to engage in it.”
It added, “The OSCE and France should condemn this court ruling just as they condemned the jailing of human rights activist Yevgeny Zhovtis, and should draw all the appropriate conclusions from it.”
The editor of the weekly Alma Ata Info, Esergepov was arrested in January after publishing an article about alleged influence-trafficking involving a Taraz-based businessman and local representatives of the National Security Committee (KNB), the KGB’s successor.
He was convicted on August 8 of gathering and divulging classified documents under articles 172 and 339 of the criminal code.
