Kazakhstan's Newspapers. Photo by Esther Dyson, 2006, who commented at the time "Only Respublika carries news of the opposition."
This is like that old Soviet joke about how in fact you did have freedom to demonstrate in Red Square; you just didn't have freedom after demonstrating in Red Square.
So much for those soi-disant democratic elections in Kazakhstan. And now it's after the elections, and it's not so free.
The offices of the unregistered party Alga! were raided today, says fergananews.com. The homes of Vladimir Kozlov and other leaders were searched as well.
And Igor Vinyavsky, a journalist at an independent publication, Vzglyad [Viewpoint] has been detained by the KNB (Committee for National Security or secret police), says Respublika.
This looks serious, as a criminal case has been opened and he is charged with Art. 170-2, "calls for the violent overthrow of the state or change of the constitutional order". The punishments range from fines to 2-7 years of imprisonment. His wife has reported on Respublika's Facebook page that Igor has been told he will be held 72 hours.
I remember Kozlov speaking at the OSCE Human Dimension Implementation Meeting in Warsaw in 2010, in the run-up to the Astana summit, struggling to get on the speaker's list with dozens of fake GONGOs elbowing him aside. As he spoke, the Kazakh chair of the meeting tried to gavel him down even before his time was up. He continued and said that while the government was persecuting the opposition today, "someday the opposition will come for you, and you will answer for your crimes," he said.
The Kazakh ambassador began to warn him that he was violating Kazakh laws restricting speech and was inciting unrest.
Afterward, I met with Kozlov, got a copy of his speech and we discussed it -- it really didn't seem to be inciting any harm to tell an oppressive government that someday they would have to answer for their human rights violations. Oppositions the world over make statements like this all the time.
It was one of many chilling moments at the OSCE meeting where I marked down direct threats made by the Kazakh delegation -- they even brought a prosecutor along to make the statements more convincing -- and later I wrote to State Department officials urging them to follow up on these people after the summit and after Kazakhstan's chair ended to see how they would fare.
As one fellow in the comments put it, "They said it wouldn't end with Zhanaozen. We must support people!"
