The United Nations Human Rights Council has caught Kazakhstan in another violation of international human rights law. This was stated by the working group on arbitrary detention, which studied the circumstances of the arrest and conviction of the civil activist from the Kazakh city of Zhanaozen Yerzhan Elshibaev.
Yerzhan Elshibaev organized protests in early 2019, demanding to provide residents of Zhanaozen with jobs at the local oil company. The police threatened him several times that they would open a criminal case if he didn’t stop his protests. As the activist’s friends said, the police promised Yerzhan to accuse him of stealing computers and participating in some kind of fight. Despite the threats, Elshibaev held several peaceful rallies in February and March 2019, at which he accused the first President of Kazakhstan, Nursultan Nazarbayev, of corruption and ineffective use of budget funds. A video from one of these rallies got into YouTube and literally the next day, on March 24, 2019, Elshibaev was detained.
On March 26, the investigative court in the city of Zhanaozen authorized the arrest of the activist for two months. He was charged with committing an offense under the article “Hooliganism”. Allegedly, in 2017, Elshibaev participated in some kind of fight, during which he injured an unknown person.
Yerzhan himself didn’t agree with the charges brought against him, saying that he was being persecuted for civic activity. On June 26, 2019, the trial began in the case of Elshibaev. In October of the same year, 31-year-old activist, father of two minor children, Yerzhan Elshibaev, was sentenced to five years in prison.
“During the rallies in Zhanaozen, in which Yerzhan participated, he demanded the provision of jobs for the unemployed. At one of the protests, Elshibaev turned to Nazarbayev and spoke out in a harsh manner against him. After that, they began to look for an opportunity to put the civil activist in prison,” said the human rights activist, head of the human rights organization “Liberty” Galym Ageleuov at the press conference held after the sentencing of the activist.
Ageleuov also said that in 2017 Yerzhan really participated in a fight, but it was self-defense.
According to Ageleuov, this incident took place, but it was the guy’s self-defense.
“On the day when Elshibaev went to work, four people attacked him and began to beat him. Defending himself, Yerzhan stabbed one of the attackers with a bottle. It’s noteworthy that in 2017 the police didn’t initiate a case on the fact of this scuffle, since the parties were reconciled and had no complaints against each other. Moreover, at this hearing, the guy, who testified on this incident, also stated that he had no complaints against Elshibaev and asked not to judge him. However, the mechanism has already been launched,” the human rights activist emphasized.
In December, Yerzhan was transported from Aktau (a city in western Kazakhstan) to Lenger (a city in the south of the country), and this was done in secret from his friends and relatives.
In March 2020, a video message from Elshibaev appeared on social networks, in which he announced that he had been beaten by a prison guard in AK-167/9 colony, where he was serving his sentence. After that, the colony officers forced Elshibaev to sign a statement in which he denied the fact of beating.
In August 2020, Elshibaev filed a formal complaint of cruel treatment. However, instead of investigating his statement, officials placed the activist in solitary cell for two weeks.
In September 2020, Irish parliamentarian and socialist Paul Murphy made an appeal to the authorities of Kazakhstan to release the political prisoner Yerzhan Elshibaev.
“I learned about the alarming events in the case of Yerzhan Elshibaev. I know that in the last month, he sewed up his mouth in protest against torture, according to him, he was subjected to in prison. I am writing to you with a request to conduct an immediate independent investigation of allegations of torture against Mr. Elshibaev and the case against him,” the parliamentarian wrote in his letter to the President of Kazakhstan, Kasym-Zhomart Tokayev.
In October 2020, Elshibaev was secretly, again without informing his relatives, transferred from Lenger to ЗК-169/5 colony in Kyzylorda.
In November 2020, the American non-governmental organization “Freedom Now”, which advocates for prisoners of conscience around the world, sent an appeal on the case of Elshibaev to the UN working group on arbitrary detention.
The working group, after examining the case materials provided by Freedom Now, concluded that “Elshibaev’s detention was a consequence of his legitimate exercise of the right to freedom of expression and the right to participate in public life”. In addition, the working group stated that “the government of Kazakhstan violated international human rights law by imprisoning human rights activist Yerzhan Elshibaev”.
“We welcome the decision of the working group. Yerzhan Elshibaev spent more than two years in illegal detention on trumped-up charges aimed at obstructing his peaceful activities. We are deeply concerned that Yerzhan continued to face harassment and abuse in prison, including lengthy solitary confinement and secret transfer to prison thousands of miles from his family. We call on the government of Kazakhstan to comply with the requirements of the United Nations and immediately and unconditionally release Yerzhan,” said Freedom Now legal officer Adam Lhedmat.
It’s worth noting that Yerzhan Elshibaev is included in the list of political prisoners in Kazakhstan, compiled by Kazakh human rights activists.
Leave feedback about this