Kazakhstan: Media Forum Focuses Attention on Stifling Journalistic Environment

The opening of the annual Eurasian Media Forum in Kazakhstan stands to highlight a discrepancy in the government's sweeping reform pledges and its lack of action, political analysts say.

The forum, organized by the president's daughter, Dariga Nazarbayeva, is scheduled to run from April 24-26. Some local observers express hope that the gathering might revive efforts to liberalize the country's mass media legislative framework. During their successful lobbying effort to secure the chair the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, Kazakhstani leaders gave assurances that they would implement wide-ranging reforms. [For background see the Eurasia Insight archive]. Since then, however, little has been accomplished, prompting some foreign experts to question Kazakhstan's commitment to fulfilling its pledges before assuming the OSCE helm in 2010.

The guarded optimism expressed by some members of the journalistic community as last year's Eurasian Media Forum opened subsided long ago. A new, more liberal press law that was then in parliament has been shelved, and slow progress on drafting another version essentially precludes the possibility of new legislation being in place before the start of 2009, when Kazakhstan will join the OSCE Troika of past, present and future chairs.

"The situation is back to square one," Tamara Kaleyeva, the head of the Adil Soz (Free Speech) non-governmental organization, told EurasiaNet. "It is now expected that new work will start on a draft media law, and will start from scratch, under the leadership of the Ministry of Information."

In April 2007, on the eve of that year's forum, Nazarbayeva, then a lower house deputy, introduced a new draft media law in parliament. [For background see the Eurasia Insight archive]. But the bill stalled after parliament was dissolved later that year.

In early elections last August, the pro-presidential party, Nur Otan, gained a virtual monopoly of parliament seats, spelling doom for the media legislation. [For background see the Eurasia Insight archive]. "The locomotive of this draft law was Dariga Nazarbayeva," said Kaleyeva. "She didn't become a deputy in the new parliament, and the draft law was left without deputy's support.