“I am monitoring the case of Ramazan Yesergepov, the editor of the weekly Alma-Ata Info,
who was detained on 6 January for disclosing internal documents of Kazakhstan's National
Security Committee in articles critical of this agency. Unfortunately, Yesergepov is still
under arrest, and all proceedings so far have been closed to the public," Miklos Haraszti, the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe’s (OSCE) Representative on Freedom of the Media, claimed in his July 2nd, 2009 “Regular Report to the Permanent Council.”
When news of the arrest of Mr. Yesergepov reached the United States Mission to the OSCE, the following statement was delivered by Charge d’Affaires Kyle Scott to the Permanent Council, Vienna:
January 22, 2009
Madam Chairwoman,
The United States notes the concern expressed by the Representative on Freedom of the Media Miklos Haraszti and by the European Union on the case of Ramazan Yesergepov, the editor of the weekly Alma-Ata Info. Mr. Yesergepov is under arrest for allegedly disclosing state secrets while publishing internal documents of the Kazakh National Security Committee on November 21.
The Representative on Freedom of the Media has long campaigned for shield laws for journalists, including in my own country. We agree with the Representative that conflicts around unauthorized disclosures of national security documents are a sign of the growing maturation of freedom of the media in any society. This does not mean that any national security document can be disclosed, but clearly it is appropriate that there be discussions on which types of documents might justifiably be covered by such restrictions. For instance, documents related to tax evasion or those whose revelation would simply be embarrassing to a government or to persons in positions of power would not be expected to meet that threshold in modern democracies.
We hope this incident and the international scrutiny surrounding it will further stimulate debate in Kazakhstan on these very issues.
Thank you, Madam Chairwoman.
Sentencing of Yesergepov
On Saturday, the Kazakhstani court decided to sentence the owner and chief editor of Alma-Ata Info newspaper to three years in prison. Freedom House denounces the decision and calls for the country’s appeals court to overturn his conviction and insists on his immediate release.
"The shameful conduct of Ramazan Yesergepov's trial is not befitting of a country that will assume the chairmanship of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe next year," said Jennifer Windsor, Freedom House executive director. "This conviction not only violates Mr. Yesergepov's right to free speech as enshrined in the Kazakhstani constitution, but also the principles and mission of the OSCE."
Today, Haraszti announced that the prison term is indeed a violation of international standards and OSCE commitments on media freedom.
"Criminalizing civilians or journalists for breach of secrecy deprives the public of important information and leaves investigative journalism without one of its most important tools; the liberty to go beyond official stonewalling. Revealing possible wrongdoings of the authorities is the main duty of the journalists acting in the public interest," said Haraszti in a letter to Kazakh Foreign Minister Marat Tazhin. He added, “Criminal sanctions for 'breach of secrecy' should only apply to the officials whose job descriptions stipulate the duty to protect sensitive information, but not to citizens who transmitted or published that information," said Haraszti.
"I still hope that Kazakhstan, which will chair the OSCE in 2010, will provide a safe working environment for journalists covering social and political issues."
Not unlike Freedom House, he has urged that the sentence be overturned and that Yesergepov be allowed to publish his newspaper again.
According to Reporters without Borders, Nazarbayev has acted as a predator to press freedom since his reelection in 2005. They report that any insult to his reputation and dignity has been made punishable by a prison term and he has made it easier to shut down opposition papers.
“This outrageous sentence ends a prosecution that was marred by irregularities from the outset,” Reporters Without Borders said. “Esergepov (Yesergepov) was just doing his professional and civic duty by exposing the complicity between businessmen and the KNB,” Reporters Without Borders said. “It is the KNB’s representatives who should have been on trial, not the journalist.”
The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights was ratified by Kazakhstan in 2006. Article 9 concerns the rights of people who have prosecuted and condemns arbitrary detention. Reporters without Borders reports that Esergepov (Yesergepov) had to defend himself during the trial, even though Kazakh constitution gives everyone the right to be defended by a lawyer of their choice.
According to several reports, including Journalists in Danger advocacy group director Rozlana Taukina, Yesergepov lacked appropriate medical attention for a cardio-vascular problem during his detention. He was also refused family visits.
The International Freedom of Expression Exchange reports that Kazakh citizens defended Yesergepov during the investigation and legal proceedings. The charges against Yesergepov are the consequences the journalist has faced as a result of an article he published entitled “Who rules our country: the president or the Committee of National Security (CNS)?" on November 21, 2008. It contained a portion of an official correspondence between two CNS officials – Zhambyl regional department head and CNS chairman Amangeldy Shabdarbayev.
Reform in Kazakhstan
In January, Freedom House and the “OSCE 2010” coalition of leading Kazakhstani NGO’s published an analysis of the new Laws on Political Parties and Elections that was passed by parliament. They concluded that these laws fall short of the promises of real reform to the political and media environments that Kazakhstan’s Foreign Minister Tazhin made prior to the country being awarded the Chairmanship of the OSCE in November 2007 at the Madrid meeting of the OSCE.
A new internet law that has been passed in Kazakhstan has gotten a lot of negative reactions from foreign and local journalists, civil rights activists, Human Rights Watch, and Haraszti. The internet law classifies all websites, blogs and chatrooms as media outlets and subjects them to strict regulation, and introduces restrictions on the reporting of elections, rallies, and strikes. Haraszti calls the adoption of the law “a step backwards in the democratization of Kazakhstan’s media governance.”
In addressing the new internet law, US Ambassador to Kazakhstan Richard E. Hoagland’s stated during an Aktau Press Conference in July,
“…let me say something about the Internet Law. Our position, as the U.S. Government, is that it is important now for Kazakhstan not to use that law to limit freedom of speech and to limit freedom of the mass media. We will watch closely how the law is implemented, and we will not be shy to make our views known.”
Kazakhstan will be the first former Soviet republic to gain the chairmanship of the OSCE. In the last five years, Kazakhstani rights advocates have considered that US influence on Kazakhstani’s government’s behavior towards the media would be minimal, even while the Bush administration was one of few from the international community pushing for democratic reform. As the Kazakh public actively discusses and protests the internet law, they have noticed some of the contradictions of the internet laws. The new law wants to use foreign media as a model to create their own Kazakhstan online media, but how can it with a restrictive media law. The Committee to Protect Journalists’ deputy director Robert Mahoney has called the internet law incompatible with the upcoming OSCE chairmanship.
It seems also to have a stagnating effect on democratization commitments made by the Central Asian leader Nazarbayev. He signed a Charter on Democratic Partnership in 1994 with then-President Clinton and repeated the pledge in joint statements with President Bush in December 2001 and September 2006.
Kazakh’s foreign ministry spokesman Erzhan Ashikbayev told Kazakhstan Today that the new law would not affect its chairmanship of the OSCE. "The Ministry of Foreign Affairs will undertake all the necessary measures to explain [to] our OSCE partners the current situation, which caused accepting this law."
Kazakhstan has its first National Human Rights Action Plan. It was unveiled on April 14th, 2009, by the Presidential Human Rights Commission. According to George A. Krol, Deputy Assistant Secretary for South and Central Asian Affairs, speaking before the Helsinki Commission in May 2009 on the topic of “Approaching the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe Chairmanship: Kazakhstan 2010,” Kazakhstan was asked to delay its Chairmanship from 2009 to 2010 to undertake several democratic reforms. He also noted,
“the National Human Rights Action plan recommends that by 2011, the government decriminalize libel, further improve and streamline the process of media-outlet registration, adopt a new law on access to government information, and institute a statute of limitations on libel cases.”
That doesn’t seem to help Yesergepov’s case. In January 2009, Haraszti wrote to the Minister of Foreign Affairs Marat Tazhin to remind the authorities that Yesergepov’s case was
“the proper occasion to reform the rules on classification, de-criminalize breach of secrecy committed by non-officials, and grant protection of journalistic sources.”
The February response from Ambassador of the Republic of Kazakhstan Kairat Abdrakhmanov contained the comments of Kazakhstan’s National Security Committee on the case, which stressed observance by the agency of the current laws.
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