In Kazakhstan, the detained participants of the rally went on hunger strike
26 people, who were detained in Almaty for participating in rallies on December 16, went on a hunger strike to protest unfair court decisions.
According to the Kazakhstan’s International Bureau of Human Rights, Kanat Dzhakupov, one of those detained and sentenced to administrative arrest, transmitted information on the hunger strike through lawyers.
On December 16, Kazakhstan celebrates a national holiday – the Independence Day. On such days, activists and opposition citizens hold rallies in major cities of the country, primarily in Almaty and Nur-Sultan. As a rule, all these meetings are unauthorized. Moreover, the Republic’s Prosecutor General’s office and law enforcement agencies inform citizens in advance that participation in unauthorized meetings is fraught with serious consequences. However, since it is not possible to obtain official permission from the authorities to hold rallies, since the authorities rejected such applications under various pretexts, people are forced to hold protests without a legal basis.
So, it was on December 16. In Almaty, unauthorized rallies were held on Republic Square and near the monument to the victims of the events of December 1986. In total, about 100-150 people took part in these meetings. At the rallies, the participants of the movement “Oyan, Kazakhstan” [Wake up, Kazakhstan!] held up posters with the words “Kazakhstan without the Nazarbaevs”, “Freedom is stronger than all prisons,” “The word should be free”. Rally participants also demanded political reform and freedom for political prisoners.
In Nur-Sultan, the rally was held near the monument to the victims of hunger. In both cities, police detained activists and took them to police stations. On December 17, officially became aware of 55 detainees: 32 people in the capital and 23 in Almaty. Many of them received administrative arrest for up to 15 days.
On December 19 and 20, appeals of detainees were examined. According to Kazakhstan’s International Bureau of Human Rights, only two detainees have the court reduced the term of their stay in a special detention center for administratively arrested people.
The human rights activist Erlan Kaliev, who was contacted by the detainees, sent an official appeal to ombudsman Elvira Azimova with a request to help clarify all the circumstances that forced those serving administrative detention to go on hunger strike.
According to human rights activists, all those arrested are under pressure from the staff of the detention center.
As ACCA learned, participants in the National Preventive Mechanism against Torture went to the hunger strike participants.
