Critical opinion or discrediting information?

This July the monitoring service of the Adil Soz Foundation received the following message:

"Tursynbai Galinov, Head of the Department for Regulation of Natural Monopolies and Protection of Competition of the Almaty Region, filed a lawsuit to the Taldykorgan City Court for protection the honor and dignity against the public activist Lubov Garkusha.

The reason for the lawsuit was the billboard that L. Garkusha placed on the street in Taldykorgan. It depicted her own photo and said: " I do not trust Tursynbai Galinov, dismiss him". Thus L. Garkusha expressed her disagreement with the her exslusion form the public council under the department, allegedly because of her incompatibility with the expert's qualifications that she believed to be unlawful.

 Commentary of "Adil soz":

 In accordance with Art. 143 of the Civil Code of the Republic of Kazakhstan damage to honor and dignity is caused by dissemination of unreliable defamatory information. The billboard did not contain any information about the plaintiff. Garkusha expressed her attitude to the plaintiff thus realizing her constitutional right to freely express her opinion.

 The full text of the July monitoring is available In Russian at http://www.adilsoz.kz/monitoring/show/id/147