Violations of Freedom of Speech in Kazakhstan October 2021

The International Foundation for the Protection of\r\nFreedom of Speech \"Adil Soz\" conducted a study of the situation with\r\nthe right to freedom of expression, receipt and dissemination of information in\r\nKazakhstan in October 2021.

Itreports:

- Nurlybek Ozhayev,\r\ndeputy of the Mazhilis (lower chamber) of Parliament for the Nur Otan\r\nparty,  proposed to legislate against\r\n\"publishing  information about cases\r\npending in court proceedings that have not entered into legal force on social\r\nnetworks and (or) the media\" and to prosecute for violation of this clause.

Nurlybek Ozhayev\r\nproposed to introduce such a provision into the draft law on amendments and\r\nadditions to the Constitutional Law of the Republic of Kazakhstan \"On the\r\njudicial system and the status of judges of the Republic of Kazakhstan\"\r\nbeing discussed in parliament.

The proposal made by\r\nthe deputy caused a furious reaction in social networks and in the media and\r\nNurlybek Ozhayev informed that he had temporarily withdrawn his offer: “The\r\ninformation agenda should be formed by authorized journalists in media but not\r\nby bloggers and activists in social networks. Journalists are literate people,\r\nthey are reasonable in what they are writing. The legal mechanism stipulated by\r\nthe bill is quite srtict, so I withdrew my offer. We are not talking about\r\njournalists, but about various activists, bloggers who imagined themselves to\r\nbe journalists. I will rewrite my proposal and will submit it again later.\r\n\"

Human rights defenders,\r\njournalists and lawyers believe that  the\r\nproposal to ban articles about court proceedings violates  the Constitution of the Republic of\r\nKazakhstan and is illegal under the  \r\ncountry\'s international obligations.

- HOLA News was\r\nunavailable for Kazakhstani and foreign readers for 10 days from October 4. The\r\neditors did not receive any formal notification or stated justification of the\r\nblocking.

The website was\r\nsuffering from various cyberattacks for several weeks before it was blocked.\r\nHOLA News technical service was able to repel them.

Meanwhile he editors\r\ncontinued to produce and publish news on HOLA News accounts in social networks.\r\n

On October 7, the\r\nInternational Foundation for the Protection of Freedom of Speech Adil Soz\r\nappealed to the Minister of Information and Social Development Aida Balayeva.\r\nIt called the situation with the blocking of thewebsite urgent, requiring the\r\ninterference of the ministry and protection of the media. \"Adil soz\"\r\nasked to use all the powers given to Minister Balayeva \"to immediately\r\ninvestigate this egregious incident, restore the normal functioning of HOLA\r\nNews and inform the public about the reasons for this violation of the\r\nconstitutional norms of freedom of speech.\"

“The Ministry has sent\r\na corresponding request to the Ministry of Digital Development, Innovation and\r\nAerospace Industry (MDDIAI) to find out the reasons. According to preliminary\r\ninformation, MDDIAI did not take any actions to block access to the\r\nwebsite\", Balayeva said.

The Minister of\r\nInformation and Social Development assured that the ministry will continue its\r\nefforts find out the reasons for the malfunctioning of the said website.

On October 15, the founders of the HOLA News Kazakhstan, Alisher\r\nKaidarov, Adilet Tursynbekov, and editor-in-chief Zarina Akhmatova announced\r\nthat they are leving the project. \"Given the current challenges we had to\r\ngive up our basic principle after 10 days of blocking our website . We have\r\ndeleted the news from the website…. That is why we believe that it\'s better to\r\nleave than to stay and to remain true to ourselves ” they say in an address to\r\nreaders posted on the  website that was\r\nfinally unblocked.

- Ministry of\r\nInformation and Public Development published \r\n\"Regulation of support of journalists in case of violation of their\r\nrights\" for public discussion

On October 11, the\r\nMinistry of Information and Social Development published the “Regulation on\r\nsupport of journalists in case of violation of their rights” for public\r\ndiscussion that will last til October 25

The Regulation provides\r\nfor the following issues:

1) consideration of\r\nappeals and requests for information of mass media and journalists;

2) detention of\r\njournalists by law enforcement bodies;

3) issues related to\r\nthe social security of journalists.

- The six-hour social\r\nmedia outage on October 4 was not related to cyber attacks.

On October 4, at 10 PM\r\nNur-Sultan time, the social networks Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat,\r\nViber, WhatsApp failed. Kazakhstani users suggested that a massive cyber attack\r\nwas launched by the founder of the World Economic Forum, Klaus Schwab, could\r\nhave caused the failure of social networks and messengers. The failure lasted\r\nfor about six hours.

After the networks\r\nbecame avaible again, the Facebook team issued an statement. It apologized to\r\n\"all people and companies around the world\" and told about the\r\nreasons for the incident. “During one of these scheduled maintenance work\r\n(shutting off part of the backbone), a maintenance team was given  the task \r\nto defien the availability of the global backbone bandwidth, that\r\ninadvertently shut down all connections on our backbone, effectively shutting\r\ndown Facebook data centers around the world. Our systems are designed to audit\r\nsuch commands to prevent such errors, but a bug in this auditing tool prevented\r\nit from properly stopping the command, ”the message says.

4 judicial acts was issued against media in connection\r\nwith the exercise of the right to freedom of expression , the receipt and\r\ndissemination of information in October 2021.\r\nThree of them were in favor of defendants.

The following charges were filed in connection with\r\nthe exercise of the right to freedom of expression:

- 6 civil claims and lawsuits (4 of them for\r\nprotection of honor, dignity and business reputation).

The following charges were filed since the beginning of the year:

- 25 criminal charges (11 in court).

- 56 claims and suits in civil procedure (51 of them\r\nfor protection of honor, dignity and business reputation).

Claims for compensation for non-pecuniary damage\r\namounted to 25 million 700 thousands tenge. Thecourtscollected 1 million 290 thousandtenge.

- 25 administrativecharges

The monitoring is based on the reports of the Adil Soz\r\nFoundation\'s and publicly available information

Head of monitoring service of Adil Soz Foundation

Elena Tsoi e-mail: lena@adilsoz.kz

For all monitoring questions, you can also contact\r\ninfo@adilsoz.kz