EurasiaNet Civil Society - Kazakhstan: Media Forum Focuses Attention on Stifling Journalistic Environment

CIVIL SOCIETY

KAZAKHSTAN: MEDIA FORUM FOCUSES ATTENTION ON STIFLING JOURNALISTIC ENVIRONMENT
Joanna Lillis 4/23/08

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. � There is no-one we can work with as allies in the new parliament."

Addressing the OSCE last November, just before Kazakhstan was awarded the chairmanship of the organization, Foreign Minister Marat Tazhin pledged action on media legislation that would take OSCE recommendations into account, albeit without firm commitments. "In the context of the future chairmanship we intend to incorporate various proposals into combined draft amendments to the law on the media, where OSCE recommendations will also find their reflection," he said.

The Culture and Information Ministry did not immediately respond to EurasiaNet’s requests for comment on the media environment or the legislative process.

The Information Ministry, the OSCE and Adil Soz agreed in February to set up a working group to prepare media law reform proposals by the end of the year, but Kaleyeva is now skeptical about Kazakhstan’s chances of adopting a new law before taking over the OSCE chair. "I am personally sure that before 2010, we will have no new law because putting some democratic norms into the law would � undermine the foundations of the current authorities, and introducing non-democratic norms means entering into conflict with the OSCE," she said.

Plans to decriminalize defamation in Kazakhstan, something that the OSCE has long called for, have become bogged down amid mutual recrimination, with officials saying planned changes to the criminal code liberalize libel law and journalists saying they do not go far enough.

Free speech advocates point out that civil � rather than criminal � defamation cases could still be brought in court under the existing plan, leaving journalists exposed to facing financially ruinous libel actions. Kazakhstan has proven to be a litigious environment for journalists. In 2007 alone, plaintiffs sought over 2.1 billion tenge 9roughly $16.4 million) in damages from journalists in 130 separate cases. The amount awarded ended up being far less than that sought. Even so, the ease with which cases can be brought under the existing framework in effect intimidates journalists, and hampers coverage of many controversial issues.

Officials stoutly defend Kazakhstan’s press freedom record. "We are united by the desire to make Kazakhstan even more democratic, our information sphere more open and our media more free, contemporary and independent," Information Minister Yermukhamet Yertysbayev told the OSCE Permanent Council last July. "We have embarked upon a firm course of constructing a modern information community, the fundamental elements of which will be the e-Government, digital television with the corresponding expansion of the services granted, access to the Internet for the rural population, including the farthermost areas, and equal and general access to modern information services."

On the same day, the OSCE published a report on Internet governance, in which Kazakhstan was cited for numerous attempts at web censorship. Several local websites carrying material critical of the government have been unavailable in Kazakhstan since last October, and problems have recently emerged in accessing the Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty site from within Kazakhstan.

Journalists also face physical reprisals for independent reporting. Adil Soz recorded 10 threats against journalists last year, and seven suspicious deaths in criminal incidents and traffic accidents that were not specifically linked to journalistic activity. The number of recorded attacks on newspaper offices and staff stood at 12 last year, one down from 2006. On April 1, shots were fired into the editorial office of the independent Taszhargan newspaper, which interpreted the incident � in which no-one was hurt � as a threat. "We assume that the bullet holes in the window were another warning to our newspaper," a Taszhargan commentary stated. "What can we do if our editorial credo is a truthful reflection of events and their free interpretation, not partisan to the opinion of the authorities and interested departments and security services?"

Editor�s Note: Joanna Lillis is a freelance writer who specializes in Central Asia.

The Central Eurasia Project aims, through its website, meetings, papers, and grants, to foster a more informed debate about the social, political and economic developments of the Caucasus and Central Asia. It is a program of the Open Society Institute-New York. The Open Society Institute-New York is a private operating and grantmaking foundation that promotes the development of open societies around the world by supporting educational, social, and legal reform, and by encouraging alternative approaches to complex and controversial issues.

The views expressed in this publication do not necessarily represent the position of the Open Society Institute and are the sole responsibility of the author or authors.