Kazakhstan: 3 more people were included in the list of political prisoners
The Expert Council of human rights defenders of Kazakhstan has once again revised the list of political prisoners. This is the fifth revision of the list over the past 9 months.
By the decision of the Expert Council, two civil activists, Asylkhan Zhaubatyrov and Erulan Amirov, as well as Bekizhan Mendygaziev, the brother of entrepreneur Barlyk Mendygaziev from the city of Uralsk, were included in the list of political prisoners in Kazakhstan.
44-year-old Asylkhan Zhaubatyrov is a resident of the city of Aktobe. According to the Kazakhstan International Bureau for Human Rights (KIBHR), Zhaubatyrov is charged under Article 405 of the Criminal Code (Participation in the activities of a public or religious association or other organization after a court decision banning their activities or liquidating them in connection with extremism or terrorism). After the initiation of the case, the activist was under house arrest for two months, but on May 20, the preventive measure was changed to detention.
A similar charge was brought against the 33-year-old resident of the city of Chimkent Erulan Amirov. In addition, Amirov is also charged with other articles of the Criminal Code – incitement of social, national, gender, racial, class or religious hatred and propaganda of terrorism or public calls to commit an act of terrorism. Amirov has been in custody since the beginning of the pre-trial investigation, but on June 10, he was placed in a psychiatric hospital in the village of Aktas (Almaty region).
As for Bekizhan Mendygaziev, he is the brother of businessman Barlyk Mendygaziev, who lives in the United States.
Barlyk Mendygaziev is a well-known person in Kazakhstan. For the first time, the businessman from Uralsk, who created and headed the oil service company “KSS-building”, became famous in 2012, when he publicly spoke out against the then mayor of the West Kazakhstan region, Nurlan Nogayev. In 2015, Mendygaziev donated his company “KSS-building” worth $ 40 million to his team of 180 employees. In 2020, the entrepreneur, who at that time had already moved to the United States, created a non-profit and non-governmental Foundation for the Fight for Civil Rights “Freedom Kazakhstan”. The Foundation provides financial and legal support to political prisoners.
On June 3 of this year, an investigative court in Atyrau sanctioned the arrest of 55-year-old Bekizhan Mendygaziev on charges of “Participation in an organized group or criminal organization”, “Large-scale tax evasion” and “Large-scale money laundering”.
Barlyk Mendygaziev believes that the authorities, having arrested his brother, are trying to influence him. Kazakhstani human rights activists adhere to the same position. They also believe that Bekizhan Mendygaziev turned out to be a “hostage” in connection with the philanthropic and human rights activities of Barlyk Mendygaziev.
It’s worth recalling that the last time the list of political prisoners in Kazakhstan was revised by the Expert Council in March this year. Then the list was supplemented by five activists from the opposition and the civil sector – Maksut Appasov, Medet Yeseneev, Abzal Kanaliev, Merey Korbakov and Aydar Syzdykov.
Today the list of political prisoners in the country includes about 20 names. Among them, in addition to the above, there are also the leader of the protests of the unemployed people in the city of Zhanaozen, Yerzhan Yelshibaev, who has been serving a five-year prison term since 2019; activists Almat Zhumagulov and Kenzhebek Abishev, sentenced in 2018 to eight and seven years, respectively, in the case of “secular jihadists”; poet and dissident Aron Atabek, sentenced in 2007 to 18 years in the case of the events in Shanyrak (start of term was in 2006).
Meanwhile, the authorities of Kazakhstan have denied that there are political prisoners in the country.
