Kazakhstan: civil sector asks the President for protection
Non-governmental organizations of Kazakhstan wrote an open letter to the President of the country Kassym-Jomart Tokayev with a request to protect them from pressure from the fiscal authorities, as well as to radically change the current legislation regarding the civil sector.
The reason for the appeal was the events of December last year, when several non-governmental organizations, who were receiving funding from foreign sources, were fined and suspended for violations in filling out tax reporting forms, which specifically relate to the deadline of notification of receipt of funds from foreign sources and their spending.
At that time, Amangeldy Shormanbaev, the head of the public foundation “International Legal Initiative”, said that the parliamentary elections in Kazakhstan were the reason for the tax authorities’ attack on NGOs. According to representatives of the civil sector, the government tried to take them out of the game so that the world community doesn’t learn about the numerous violations during the elections.
On January 25, 2021, for the same reason, the tax authorities suspended the activities of Kazakhstan International Bureau for Human Rights and fined the organization $ 5.5 thousand. The activities of the public organization “Echo” (NGO “Echo” has been observing elections for about 20 years) and the NGO “International Legal Initiative” were also suspended.
On January 29, the International Journalism Center MediaNet also reported about the risk of repeating the fate of these NGOs.
After this situation received a wide resonance in society and the media (including thanks to ACCA), international organizations and diplomatic missions came out in defense of Kazakh NGOs. They condemned the repression against representatives of civil society, called for the lifting of sanctions and bringing the legislation in line with international standards.
Thereafter, the sanctions against these NGOs were lifted.
“However, we are concerned about the current legislation. We are sure that the persecution was connected with political motives, active civil position of the aforementioned NGOs, and the pre-election period. The reasons for such conclusions were numerous procedural violations and obvious bias on the part of the inspection authorities. The current situation made it clear how vulnerable the activities of the civil sector in Kazakhstan are. The existing legislation makes it possible to paralyze the work of NGOs due to alleged violations that don’t pose any threat to the state and society,” NGOs write in their open appeal.
They also remind the head of state that in his Address to the people of Kazakhstan in 2019, he named the development of civil society as one of the country’s development priorities and instructed to develop a Concept for the development of civil society until 2025, where one of the directions should be the formation of favorable and stimulating legislation in relation to NGOs and other institutions of civil society.
“Unreasonable pressure on NGOs causes irreparable damage to the reputation of Kazakhstan, contradicts the country’s international obligations, and prevents Kazakhstan from joining important international initiatives. Moreover, the existing legislation negatively affects the authority of the state, which declares the need for the development of civil society, but in practice demonstrates the exact opposite. Civil society organizations believe that the current legislation should be reviewed and changed, since the norms regulating the activities of NGOs are unnecessary and contain objectively disproportionate penalties. We urge you to radically revise the rules related to foreign financing (the Code of Administrative Offenses and the Tax Code) and exclude them from the current legislation. We also insist that such and other legal norms should not be used in the future as a means of political pressure on civil society,” NGOs appeal to Tokayev.
