Kazakhstan does not comply with UN recommendations

In Kazakhstan, drug users, HIV-positive people, the LGBT community and people with disabilities are subjected to discrimination both at the legislative level and in practice. The members of the Coalition of Kazakh human rights defenders came to that conclusion.

On November 7, at the Palais des Nations in Geneva, within the framework of the 34th UN universal session on human rights, the Coalition of Kazakh human rights defenders will present its report. According to ACCA, 20 human rights defenders from 12 human rights organizations and initiative groups of Kazakhstan took part in the preparation of the report.

The 13-page report includes information on freedom of expression and access to information, on suffrage, on the right to freedom of movement and choice of residence, on the right to health and the right to be recognized as a person.

As follows from the report that will be presented in Geneva, the situation with civil and political rights in Kazakhstan is still in a deplorable state.

“International human rights mechanisms have repeatedly recommended that Kazakhstan pay attention to the situation with freedom of expression, access to environmental information, the problem of blocking Internet resources,” the report says. “Kazakhstan accepted the recommendations, but did not comply with them. Every year in the country, the number of persons prosecuted under the article “Incitement to social, national, tribal, racial, estate or religious strife” is growing. According to the Committee on Legal statistics and special accounts of the General Prosecutor’s office of the Republic of Kazakhstan, in 2017, 54 persons were convicted under this article, in 2018 – already 83 persons.

At the same time, Kazakh human rights activists note that over the past five years, the courts of the Republic almost never passed acquittals in such cases. And the accused under this article were punished rather severely – from a ban on engaging in social activities to imprisonment.

“The wording of this (criminal) article and its application in practice does not meet international standards, and is often of a political nature,” say human rights activists. “The article is not formulated clearly. The principle of legal certainty is not observed. There is no clear presentation of the legal consequences and the scope of application of this legal norm. Sentences under this article, as opposed to other cases’ verdicts, are not available in the judgments database on the Supreme Court website.”

In this regard, the authors of the report recommend removing the above article from the Criminal Code and holding people responsible only in cases of a hate speech that leads to negative consequences.

Another important problem of Kazakhstan is the situation with the blocking of Internet resources. According to the human rights organizations of the Republic, at the beginning of 2019, 29 468 domains were blocked, only 1126 of them – by court order, 10661 – by order of authorized state bodies.

“In 2016, the list of persons having the right for “extrajudicial blocking” in Kazakhstan was expanded. Now, in addition to the Prosecutor general and his deputies, officials of the National Security Committee have also been granted such powers,” human rights activists report. “In practice, this has led to the fact that today, 90.45% of sites are blocked without a court order. Kazakhstan also lacks a complete and up-to-date register of banned Internet resources. All this leads to a violation of the freedom of expression on the Internet.”

To solve this problem, human rights activists recommend depriving the Prosecutor General’s office and the National Security Committee of the right to extrajudicial blocking of sites, and blocking Internet resources only in accordance with the Siracusa principles.

Special attention in the report is paid to the electoral law of people with disabilities, as well as prisoners. According to the authors of the report, the current system of suffrage is discriminatory in relation to convicts and people with disabilities and requires amendments to national legislation.

“Despite the fact that international standards oblige the state to provide its citizens with the right to vote, Kazakhstan has legislation that directly prohibits all prisoners (automatically with a court verdict) from exercising the right to vote regardless of the gravity of the crime,” the report says.

In support of their words, human rights activists cite the following figures: during the presidential election in 1995, the prison population of Kazakhstan was 85 448; in 2015, during the similar elections – 49 821 people; and during the elections to the Lower House, the country’s prison population was 39 179.

“All these people could not take part in the elections,” the authors conclude. “It follows that during each electoral cycle, on the outcome of which the political structure of the state depended, the socio-economic and other reforms affecting the lives of Kazakh citizens, each of several tens of thousands citizens could not use their electoral rights and participate through the voting procedure in choosing a model of government proposed by competing political forces because of the discriminatory nature of the law.”

The situation with the suffrage of Kazakh disabled people is not the best too. There were about 593 069 people last year (about 3% of the total population of the country). The report states that polling stations in Kazakhstan are not equipped with ramps, there is no information about the candidates, as well as the ballot papers in Braille, there is no audio and video equipment for hearing-impaired citizens.

“Thus, discriminatory practice extends to a wide range of citizens, generates ostracism of vulnerable groups, and as a result affects the voting results and creates field for further manipulations and restrictions by the state on the participation of citizens in managing state affairs,” human rights activists conclude.

To address these issues, they propose making the polling stations accessible to people with disabilities, as well as amending the law governing the prohibition on prisoners to exercise suffrage regardless of the gravity of the crime.

As for people who use opioid drugs, there are about 93 000 people in Kazakhstan. However, the opioid substitution therapy (OST) program as of December 31, 2018 consisted of only 252 people.

“According to experts, in order to achieve the goals of OST, including reducing the risk of acquiring HIV, the program needs coverage of up to 40%, that is, 37 200 people,” the report’s authors note. “In Kazakhstan, OST has been piloted for the past 10 years, but is under threat of closure.”

Migrants are not in the best position either. According to human rights activists, today medical assistance to migrants in Kazakhstan comes down only to prevent them from dying …

“Migrants are not covered by the state diagnosis and treatment for HIV infection. All these factors directly affect the decrease in life expectancy, the quality of life and the increase in mortality of migrants and indicate discrimination on the basis of citizenship,” the authors of the report explain.

They also note numerous violations of the rights of women and girls with disabilities to sexual and reproductive health. According to human rights organizations, over 5 years in Kazakhstan, only 776 cases of giving birth to women with disabilities were registered, that is, 0.04% of the total number of children for the specified period.

“In Kazakhstan, there is a coercion of women with disabilities to use contraceptives to prevent pregnancy, coercion to abortion, forced sterilization of women deprived of legal capacity due to the presence of psychosocial and / or intellectual disability,” human rights activists say. “As a rule, reproductive health decisions are made not by the woman herself, but by third parties, including legal representatives, guardians and family members, which is a violent form of reproductive health control, including sterilization and abortion.”

The coalition of Kazakh human rights defenders unites practicing experts in international human rights law, human rights researchers, and leaders of human rights non-governmental organizations. The coalition defends human rights at the national level through information gathering and analytical research, as well as through advocacy campaigns.