Law-abiding in internet: personal opinion of Tamara Kaleyeva

Yesterday Deputy Prosecutor General of the Republic of Kazakhstan Zh. Umiraliyev  appealled to the public on the issue of  social networks content. He got immediate support, particularly, form Gulnara Bizhanova, a Majilis deputy(lower chamber of the Parliiament) from Amanat party.

The video of the appeal is posted on the website of the Prosecutor General's Office,  and Tengrinews published the position of the deputy. I will share my personal opinion.

Oh,  it might be so pleasant be to support the Prosecutor General's Office and to repeat the words of a  handsome general "don't you dare!", to accuse abstract bloggers of corruption, extortion and a direct attack on stability, to remind about the prospect of a 20-year sentence and to call for the right thing - unity, creativity, etc. By the way, I remeber  various state leaders and their associates  calling for this for the last half a century. I even remember a long-buried (maybe in vain?) song-cry: “Me, you, he and she - together we are the whole country, together we are a friendly family ... ".

To be serious, if we follow the advice of Gulnara Bizhanova and think critically of the Deputy Prosecutor General Zhandos Umiraliev's appeal ( a warning, in fact) , many acute questions would occur. I'll start asking them in order.

1. “In the domestic information space and various social media, cases of dissemination of deliberately false information on various issues have become more frequent.”

I am sure that our law enforcement agencies have enough power and capabilities to reveal and punish offenders.

2. “At the same time, they are accompanied by provocative statements by bloggers and users' comments that have signs of inciting ethnic hatred.”

I don’t understand what do “provocative statements” mean from the point of view of the Prosecutor General’s Office. There is no such term in our legislation. Well, if signs of incitement are revealed in the speeches and texts of specific users of social networks, we believe that law enforcement officers are  intelligent and capable enough to   identify such people prove their guilt and punish them. What's the problem?

3. “Unreliablemessages discrediting the honor and dignity of specific citizens, as well as false messages about the detention and prosecution of a number of well-known people are  published.”

Excuse me, but  the prosecutor's office has nothing to do with their dignity. Specific citizens can defend their honor and dignity on their own if they want to. This is what  the Civil Code of the Republic of Kazakhstan says.

4. “The dissemination of such false information is mainly carried out by bloggers intentionally, in their own interests and in the interests of third parties. Their goal is personal enrichment and obtaining material benefits through extortion of funds.

It is a seriuous accusation. It must be personalized, otherwise the Prosecutor General's Office unreasonably discredits tens and hundreds of thousands of honest citizens who exercise their constitutional right to freedom of expression, receiving and disseminating information in internet.

5. I will not quote further, there is a traditional call to be law-abiding. I will only comment on the last piece of advice - "trust only official sources of information."

My question is: how many  official sources are there? What is their main goal - to give honest information or just to calm the society down? How quickly do these sources respond to  demands of the society? How do they react - humanwise  or by official statements, appeals, warnings?