According to Freedom House’s Freedom of the Press 2008 survey, Kazakhstan’s press in 2007 was only slightly less free than in 2006. Out of a scale of 100, Kazakhstan recieved a 78, where 100 represents total government control over the media and 0 represents total freedom. In 2006, the country scored 76. Overall the report characterized Kazakhstan’s press as Not Free.

In terms of the legal environment, Kazakhstan scored 26 (out of 33) and the draft report cited problems with the law on media outlets which make it expensive to register a media outlet and establish a long list of grounds for denying registration. Journalists also continue to be subject to harassment by criminal or civil lawsuits according to the report.

Political influence on the press was rated as 30 out of 33. Freedom House says that a large percentage of the media is owned or controlled by the state and/or members of the President’s family. Newspapers that report on allegations of criminal behavior by government officials are routinely shut down or fined heavily. In 2007, a number of opposition websites were shut down when they played recordings of phone calls that appeared to implicate government officials and businessmen of violations of financial laws.

The extent to which economic pressure is brought to bear on the press was ranked 22 out of 33.

At the same time that this report was released, a 5 week block on RFE/RL’s Kazakh language website was lifted. The reasons for the block were unclear. Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty is a US government funded news service.

The block may have been lifted after Miklos Haraszti, OSCE representative on media freedom, sent a formal letter to the Kazakh government:

I am convinced that the state Internet service providers were informed by your government that interference in providing service would violate Kazakhstan’s press freedom commitments.’ He adds that OSCE’s Permanent Council Decision No. 633, states that participating states must pledge ‘to take action to ensure that the Internet remains an open and public forum for freedom of opinion and expression.

Thanks to Central Asia for bringing all of this to my attention.

As Parliament debates a new law “On Religion”, Forum 18 reports on religious leaders’ complaints. Most religious leaders were hesitant to speak publicly, in itself a sign that the atmosphere in Kazakhstan is not as tolerant as the government often claims. However, Lutheran Bishop Yuri Novgorodov, whose church has 52 congregations in Kazakhstan characterized the law as “a Law on Non-Freedom of Conscience.”

Among its controversial articles, the law currently in the drafting stage, would require all religious organizations to reregister meaning that even religious organizations fully registered at this time and in full compliance of all laws would have to go back through the registration process. It would mean that 1) all religious organizations would become illegal until they reregister and it would also allow the law to have retroactive force. In other words, a religious organizatio fully established in Kazakhstan which didn’t meet new requirements would have to pack up and leave.

The draft law would allow registration for religious groups which “conduct divine services, religious rituals and preaching and other religious ceremonies”, meaning that the government is defining what is legitimate religion and what it not . Religious leaders have taken offense to this provision of the law. Some have pointed out that Buddhists, who do not necessarily meet this description, could have issues in registering. Any religion or sect that spurns religious ritual or preaching or collective services in favor of individual meditation will likely have issues registering.

Religious organizations will also be required to submit a description of:

“basics of their faith”, the history of the faith as a whole and the particular community, as well as their attitude to marriage, the family, education, the health of their adherents and their attitude to their adherents’ civil obligations. It remains unclear why this information is needed, how much information is required on each point or who will decide whether information supplied is acceptable or not.

For many this requirement is highly intrusive. It can also lead to an ungainly registration process as Muslims, Christians and Jews may need several hundred pages to fully explain the history of their faith, let along the fundamentals.

Furthermore the law allows the state to conduct expert evaluations of religious groups. The experts may be state officials, lawyers, or members of other religious groups. Religious groups can be denied registration or have their registration cancelled on the basis of these inspections.

These requirements appear to be put in place to weed out groups with anti-social beliefs such as sects that believe in violent overthrow of the government, or isolation from society, polygamy, child marriage. However the registration requirements are formulated in such a way that the burden of proof seems to fall on the religious organizations–all religions are guilty until proven innocent.

Further provisions of the law severely restrict the rights of religious organizations to collect donations, print or distribute literature, proselytize, or even organize centrally. The latter issue is likely to create problems for main stream Christian churches which are traditionally organized on the basis of local parishes or dioceses which in turn are part of larger regional dioceses.

The new law, which amends the current law “On Religion” was approved as open for consideration in Parliament on 2 April. Prime Minister Karim Massimov has given his approval to the Draft Law.

The current law is unpopular for its ban on unregistered religious activity, a provision that led to the fining and expulsion of a Norwegian and a Japanese missionary from the Christian Brothers Church this week. No other criminal charges or complaints were laid against the two missionaries. The Baptist Church has also been long entrenched in court cases with the Kazakhstan government due to the Church’s belief that registration with government organizations is “absolute intrusion into the inner life of believers”, in the words of one believer. The draft law does nothing to amend the registration requirement.

Religious groups in Kazakhstan have always been monitored more strictly than in Western countries and for years they have been asked to provide government agencies with detailed information about themselves, but recently both the number of questionnaires and the pressure on groups to complete them has increased.

This comes after Nazarbayev made a statement at a Nurotan party meeting that religious groups must be watched and after a new State Program “On the provision of freedom of belief and enhancement of state-confessional relations in the Republic of Kazakhstan for 2007-2009″ which calls for intense monitoring of religious groups.

Forum 18 has reported that neither the Islamic faith in Kazakhstan, whose Mufti is a member of the Assembly of the People of Kazakhstan under the Administration of the President, nor the Patriarch of Kazakhstan have ever received any kind of government monitoring. All other religious groups from Baptists to Catholics to Hare Krishnas appear to be targets of what some call intrusive questioning.

In addition, the way these surveys are presented is vague. Some of the questionnaires have no identification on them as to which government agency authorized them. And no one is clear on what the data is for.

Some leaders are told the information is for a “sociological survey.” One official told Forum 18 the information is needed for a database of religious organizations, but refused to say what the database is for. The official insisted that religious leaders can decline to fill in the questionnaires in if they do not want to, but some religious leaders told Forum 18 they face pressure to do so and fear consequences if they do not.

Among the questions asked on the form are:

the ethnicity of congregation members, their profession, political preferences, “the most influential and authoritative people in the community,” foreign missionaries, media contacts, “facts demanding attention on the part of state bodies,” military service of congregation leaders, their foreign language knowledge, media articles written, and the full names of leaders’ “close friends and comrades.”

Some religious groups report that they filled out the forms, others claim that they refused to do so either on religious grounds or because they felt it was unnecessary. As of yet, no groups have experienced problems for failing to do so.

Another old one—ignore the word recently and pray that the links still work! What slowed me down posting this one was finding sources for a lot of my claims here but I think by now they are old news and don’t need referencing, right?

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Esther Dyson of theNational Endowment for Democracy
recently was in Kazakhstan and published an account of her trip on Release 1.com.

There are many interesting observations here from an intelligent and experienced observer, who is not immersed in the region:

For example, they visit the National Democratic Institute and the International Republican Institute (chaired by Madeline Albright and Senator John McCain respectively. Both are branches of the NED, set up to promote democracy in the region. About the type of training in political activism these institutes provide—criticized by many political leaders and observers of the region as ‘illegitimate interfering with politics’ or ’secretly supporting opposition,’ Ms. Dyson says:

To be candid, this notion had left me a little uneasy until now. How can you non-partisanly train people in partisanship? But after meeting the players - Josh Bergin of the IRI and Mary Cummins and Sameera Ali of the NDI - and hearing them describe their work, I felt a lot better about the whole thing. They are indeed mostly going around teaching people how to run a mail-merge program, how to craft a clear message, how to measure public opinion, and so forth. There are certainly ways you could mis-apply the learning, but in this world where 1490 of 1500 newspapers are government-owned or aligned, teaching people the nuts and bolts of bottom-up communications seems pretty one-sidedly good.

Yet, as it happens, the activities of NDI and IRI have been in suspension in Kazakhstan since last spring, courtesy of the Kazakh government. This issue was raised in DC during Nazarbayev’s visit, we hear, but there has been little news since. This report Governo-Kazakh, does little to clarify things.

She also gives a description of the Polyton Club, run by Masanov who recently passed away. In this particular session, a number of bloggers and website admins were there and the question rose about how much access people have to these Internet sources;

This community is active and engaged among themselves, but they don’t reach much of the broader public. A typical home/small business Internet account at 512k - but hardly affordable by a typical home - costs $300/month, so Internet users number about half a million of Kazakhstan’s 15 million people (3 percent). Censorship is active, but it’s not like in China …In Kazakhstan, sites are simply blocked. There’s certainly a correlation between political edginess and blocking, but it’s not precise or predictable.

The government is promoting programs for computer literacy and for access everywhere—including 400 new Internet cafes (reportedly the PM gave the order that they not be ugly little holes in wall with crap computers, but actually be nicely decorated with excellent technical facilities) and the Ministry of Information, Tourism and Sport, has already announced, in no uncertain terms, its readiness to deal with criminal or slanderous websites. And a new law is already Don't be naive. This isn't just about money; it's about control. They don't want us to have access.

She also got a chance to talk to opposition politician, Galymzhan Zhakiyanov and the Eurasia Foundation as well as Green Salvation and it's worth reading her experiences and impressions.

Most interesting was her visit to the Shanirak region of Almaty, where there were recently riots between police and residents—some of whom apparently had their legal registrations but the officials claimed they were out of date. Another large population were oralmen, repatriated Kazakhs from other countries, and not given enough material support to establish proper homes. And some people were both oralmen and possessors of suddenly outdated documents. The whole area is supposed to developed for commercial uses and people were kicked off the land, without compensation. It turned out to be quite ugly with a young officer killed, and raising embarrassing questions about social development in Kazakhstan and how responsive the akims are to the people of their cities.

She writes:

As we stood out in the sunshine, we could see destroyed houses, amidst standing houses that also looked fairly decrepit. There were outhouses, and one shack with a plastic bucket atop, which passed for a shower. Various people came up and joined the conversation: they could all remember the time in July when city authorities, along with security police and bulldozers, showed up to raze the buildings. The villagers protested, standing in front of their homes. The most voluble of the women told us how she had doused herself and her children with gasoline, and threatened to strike a match. The forces stood down, but not without wrecking part of her house. More alterations ensued, and some rocks were thrown. The police claimed that the settlers had stockpiled rocks as weapons; the settlers said they were just construction materials lying around. At the end of the day, one of the policemen had been burned to death in a gasoline fire. The police attributed it to the settlers; the settlers attributed it to a provocateur.

Hopefully Ms. Dyson will continue to write similar pieces so we can get more of her perspective and her adventures.

Bonnie Boyd provides an update on the trial of Mark Seidenfeld which opened on 15 June, after a delay earlier. However, the complainant, Zhunssov was not in court, because he was too busy running a marathon in China. Clearly either this case is not very important to him, or he has watched to many Western movies in which cool people carry out business from mountain retreats while underlings do the dirty work. However, the nasty judge seems to think Zhunussov should be there 18 June when next trial date is set.

On the 15th of June, bulldozers arrived at the site of the Hare Krishna community in Almatinski oblast in the South of Kazakhstan, and destroyed 12 more homes, according to Forum 18, an international religious rights organization, despite earlier assurances that the dispute over the legal status of the commune was under negotiation.

“The action started just before seven o’clock on several homes simultaneously,” [the spokesman for the group] Varfolomeyev told Forum 18. “Workers threw personal belongings outside and then started attacking the houses with sledgehammers and crowbars. Then the diggers moved in, turning from side to side, and reduced the homes to rubble. The houses were literally crushed into dust. By ten o’clock it was all over.”

(more…)

Help Mark Seidenfeld and Boycott Ducat is a blog dedicated to reporting on the Seidenfeld case, apparently run by his attorney, Derek Bloom. If you want to read up on the case, or express your sympathies, this seems to be the place to go. I am not a lawyer and know little about big business so I am hesitant to give my opinion as if it was authoritative–once we get into takeovers and share prices, I am barely treading water. As an American working here (not in big business), I have never encountered any kind of problems. However, the evidence that Seidenfeld is innocent does seem pretty secure, namely that the money he is accused of stealing has been audited by Price, Waterhouse and Cooper, and in fact was used for what Seidenfeld said it was. In other words, the money isn’t missing, so how could he have stolen it?

In any case, no matter what side you are in, it’s worth reading about it and Help Mark Seidenfeld and Boycott Ducat, while biased in Seidenfeld’s favor has links to all the resources you need to read up on it and form your own opinion.

The Spectator has an article from last week provocatively titled Why Come to Kazakhstan?

According to the article, government controls are getting too tight for many foreign businesses and creating a disincentive to invest there. Most interestingly, the article claims that in terms of energy and mineral resource rights, things are about to get a lot more difficult:

Meanwhile, the straitjacket into which Astana is trying to squeeze foreign corporations is about to be tightened. The country’s subsoil laws, which have been successively reinforced over the years, now grant the state first rights over any energy or mineral wealth. Not content with that, this February the country’s new premier, Karim Masimov, said the government was prepared to alter, and even cancel, existing operating licences (sic) held by foreign energy and mining firms.

This is a controversial issue and there’s certainly reason to believe that foreign companies took advantage of Kazakhstan in its formative years and that many oil companies in particular pushed for some seriously beneficial deals basically saying, “without us, you won’t see a penny of profit on your oil or resources.” However, the fact that everything in Kazakhstan changes all the time, without warning, is likely one of the biggest blocks to cooperation. Projects that have been agreed to by government officials suddenly have to be renegotiated as officials can change several times a year–and apparently new officials are not always debriefed by the previous officeholder. Rules and regulations change, even locations of key offices. Along with the bureaucracy, corruption and strict government control–all cited in the Spectator article and elsewhere ad nauseum*, this love of change (or perhaps lack of appreciation of stability) make Kazakhstan a hard country to work with.

* Perhaps the most notable case of late of problems working in Kazakhstan is that of Mark Seidenfeld, imprisoned for stealing funds from his own company, Golden Telecom. Evidence seems to indicate that he did not steal the funds and his arrest is simply a punishment for not selling his company directly to a Kazakh company but instead offering an open tender. The accusers alleged close relations to powerful government and business people indicate that the trial will not be fair, creating a serious barrier to foreign desire to work in Kazakhstan.

EDIT: My first post on this is here

Although there was apparently a hearing on the 25th of December, I cannot find any updates on the decision. However, the commune did recieve a statement from the Commission on Religious Affairs. The statement and reply are here.

The statement pretty clearly distributes the responsibility elsewhere by recommending that the regional akim continue to follow all relevant laws and fix any inconsistencies in laws. But recommendation three is to:

To continue the previously suspended privatization of cottages and horticultural plots of land taking into account the requirements of land legislation and architectural and town-planning legislation of RK

This would seem to indicate that the destruction can/will continue.

For the Hare Krishna commune, the commission recommends that they continue to work with the local authorities, which would seem to block any chances of their finding a court of appeals, but that they can also report to local and international media and government bodies, presenting facts objectively.

Govinda Swami answers to raise a number of questions, including, if these decisions have been made, then what is the agenda for the 22 December meeting? And, why wasn’t he invited to the commission meeting that made this decision.

Christopher Pala who writes for The New York Times and The Washington Post, has an article summarizing the situation around the OSCE leadership bid. It’s a good summary in a few words but the last paragraphs highlight an issue that I haven’t seen too much discussion of: Kazakhstan’s reaction if it is turned down.

European countries were at first skeptical of Kazakhstan’s bid, but many decided to support it on the grounds that the regime’s pro-democratic forces would be empowered by the chairmanship’s spotlight, while hard-liners would increase their influence if it were denied.
“There will be no more incentive for progress if Kazakhstan doesn’t get it,” said Yevgeny Zhovtis, the country’s leading human rights campaigner.
“If they do, I don’t say they will necessarily behave better, but the context will be better. If not, the anti-American forces will become stronger and more public, Kazakhstan will move closer to Russia, and repression will be worse.”
Another Western diplomat noted that the issue comes after Russia and its former colonies have been demanding efforts to make the OSCE human rights and election monitoring less intrusive — changes the West refuses to consider.
“If Kazakhstan is turned down, there’s a good chance the hard-line countries could make it harder for OSCE missions to operate in their countries, cooperate less with the election monitoring missions and refuse to pass the budget,” the Western diplomat said.

I’m not sure Kazakhstan should be given the chairmanship based purely on the argument that if they don’t, they’ll start to get real mean. It’s a bit akin to giving in to a child who threatends to have a temper tantrum (the metaphor may be unfair). But if there was reason to believe the chairmanship would be a kind of incentive to further freedoms, that would be reasonable. I’m not convinced it would for the same reasons that serious reforms have not been implemented (and I think Mr. Pala is unfair to say that “not even cosmetic reforms” have begun): Kazakhstan is much more interested in the prestige of the office than the meaning of the office. Kazakhstan is looking for a resume booster, something KazMunaiGas can put on its marketing brochures.

I think it is likely that a rejection will have a backlash along the lines of “Well, they’re too strict anyway, who needs all their rules? What does it take to make these intrusive Western countries happy?”. However, I do see a general trend toward more freedom and democracy (though I question what will happen in 2012 when a new President is elected), and while there are many different motives for that, from honest belief in democracy to a desire for prestige or the elusive Euro-standard, I suspect the tide is unstoppable especially as it is being accompanied by business alliances which will demand more openess. My two cents. What do you think?