“A weak and ineffective government of Kazakhstan is afraid of free opinion. So officials are the main threat to the media and journalists in Kazakhstan.” This is the conclusion made in the annual report “Attacks on media workers in 2020”, published by the Foundation “Justice for Journalists”.
The Foundation “Justice for Journalists” is a non-profit human rights organization registered in London. It was founded in 2018 by Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Leonid Nevzlin. As explained on the organization’s website, the Foundation assists journalists and bloggers in assessing and minimizing professional risks, and also provides grants for journalistic investigations of violent crimes against media workers.
The report “Attacks on media workers in 2020” provides an analysis of the situation in twelve post-Soviet countries (excluding the Baltic countries). According to the authors of the report, in 2020, the number of threats faced by media workers in their activities increased 2.5 times (4611 cases) compared to 2019 (1907 cases), and the main source of threats remains government officials.
The report notes that in Kazakhstan, officials are also the main threat to journalists, despite the fact that 90% of the country’s media are in pro-government positions and depend on government agencies.
“Despite Kazakhstan’s regular attempts to demonstrate democratic change, the situation with journalistic freedoms remains sad. Unfortunately, cosmetic amendments to the legislation do little to contribute to real reforms, and media workers are under constant pressure,” writes Diana Okremova, director of the public foundation “Legal Media Center”, in the article concerning the situation in Kazakhstan.
According to the expert, the pandemic of 2020 has significantly aggravated the situation of journalists in Kazakhstan.
“The situation with access to information has worsened, and there are still many court cases related to publications on the Internet. Online briefings and press conferences enable government agencies to evade responses, interrupt journalists, and limit their participation. The same goes for lawsuits. Such incidents pose a real threat to journalists, since they hinder their professional activities,” the human rights activist notes.
She also emphasizes that the adoption of the law on peaceful rallies led to the fact that the state bodies of Kazakhstan changed the tactics of detention of media representatives.
“Now journalists and activists are simply taken in a circle and kept in it for hours. This practice is known as kettling. As a result, media representatives are not physically beaten, but are deprived of the opportunity to fulfill their professional duty,” the report explains.
According to Okremova, civilian journalists and bloggers, working in cyberspace, are increasingly threatened in Kazakhstan. At the same time, registered media also continue to experience difficulties associated with repressive legislation, dependence on government agencies and political pressure.
“The period from 2017 to 2020 was eventful and dramatic for journalists in Kazakhstani. The law on mass media revised several times. There were changes in the normative legal acts regulating the activities of the press, huge amounts of claims in defamation cases. The old-time methods of influencing the press were used – threats and intimidation,” the expert notes.
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