Quite recently a group of intellectuals, writers and journalists of Kazakhstan addressed an open letter to the president of the country Nursultan Nazarbayev, in which they express their growing concern about the repeated attempts of law-enforcement bodies to limit the freedom of speech under invented pretexts. "Any media organization trying to advocate its own view is put under pressure. The absurdity has already reached the point when a court imposes a ban on a paper not earlier than a day before it comes out of print without explaining reasons. To justify their arbitrary actions the law-enforcement bodies give the necessity of safeguarding the information security of Kazakhstan as an excuse, but this is not convincing’, according to the letter.

As authors of the letter point out, the concept of democracy is currently being substituted by narrow interests of various business groups, influential government circles who have concentrated in their hands significant influence over media and are now manipulating public opinion. The journalists’ letter stresses that the time is ripe to eliminate monopoly over the media, and that the process should be controlled by the President personally as well as by parliament and the society. It proposes to simplify the procedure for registration of new TV and radio channels, to reduce the amount of state duties for broadcasting licenses, to provide journalists with access to information sources, and to guarantee the rights of the citizens to express their opinions.

It is noteworthy that the letter signed by 32 people, among them by some editors of provincial papers, appeared at a time that can best be described as a new wave of information war involving well-known official figures. On October 19, a district court in the capital city Almaty suspended the publication of the paper ‘Vremiya PO’ after the deputy chief of the national security committee filed a lawsuit against the paper for printing articles damaging his reputation. The plaintiff demanded 10 million Tenge from the paper as moral compensation. Nurlan Ablyazov, chief editor of the paper, said at a press-conference that he was not going to back away from the idea of managing his paper from abroad.

The article in ‘Vremiya PO’ provoked a heated debate in the parliament and eventually led to the dismissal of the deputy chief of the national security committee from his post. But the troubles of the English-Russian-language paper which have caused the ire of the officials more than once apparently do not end with that.

Another source of irritation for the government turned out to be an Internet site, Asiopa, registered in Russia. The scandal broke out when Asiopa in early October reported corruption cases among the Kazakhstan’s leaders. The governor of the Pavlodar region Zhakiyanov, the main pinpointed individual, was not slow to react. He appealed to the Russian court and finally won a libel lawsuit. That was the first suit in Kazakhstan filed against electronic media. However, it is too early for the authorities to celebrate a victory in this never-ending media war.

Karim Sayid