Bad Press on the Steppe
Astana’s handling of its critics handicaps the state’s ability to keep in touch with its own people.
In February an editor was arrested in the old Kazakh capital of Almaty. Zhanbolat Mamay, the 29-year-old chief editor of Tribuna, an independent newspaper, was arrested on suspicion of money laundering on behalf of Astana’s big, bad enemy Mukhtar Ablyazov more than decade ago. According to the state anti-corruption service, Tribuna played a part in laundering money embezzled from BTA Bank by Ablyazov and his associates in 2005-2009.
The Medeu Regional Court, which arrested the editor, plans to hold him in detention for two months while the investigation continues. The newspaper has never been mentioned as involved in the Ablyazov case before. Ablyazov, who was released from a French prison in December after the country’s highest administrative court canceled an order to extradite him to Russia – noting that it was politically motivated – wrote on Facebook after Mamay’s arrest that he’d never met the editor. He also pointed out that when the alleged money laundering began Mamay would have been 17.
It’s Mamay’s own actions – and that of his newspaper – that have damned him in the state’s eyes, not some elaborate money laundering scheme.
As EurasiaNet reported, Tribuna is one of the few independent media outlets left in Kazakhstan. “Unlike most media in Kazakhstan, Tribuna is not a beneficiary of the ‘state order’ system,” EurasiaNet notes. In the “state order” system, Astana either finances in part or pays outright for media to publicize state policies and initiatives. This compromises an outlet’s ability to report critically on state policies. Tribuna has developed a reputation for critical reporting and Mamay for being outspoken.
In 2012, Mamay was arrested after being accused of inciting violence during the unrest in Zhanaozen the previous December. Reporters Without Borders called his arrest arbitrary. Mamay said he’d gone to Zhanaozen to interview the striking oil workers – the state categorized this as “inciting social discord.”
The next year, a court in Almaty suspended the distribution of Tribuna for three months in September 2013 because it had violated an obscure law which, according to EurasiaNet, required “media to inform the authorities if they intend to stop publishing for any period of time.” The paper had stopped publishing for about a month between July and August that year. Tribuna was forced to stop publishing because it had stopped publishing.
Activists said the state’s prosecution of Tribuna was politically motivated then, and say the same now. Mamay is just the latest in a growing list of journalists, editors, and bloggers who have found themselves on the wrong side of Kazakh law.
"Kazakhstan's authorities have systematically cleansed the country's news media of dissenting voices, and the arrest of Zhanbolat Mamay is one more step in that direction," Nina Ognianova, the Committee to Protect Journalists’ Europe and Central Asia Program coordinator said in a statement shortly after Mamay’s arrest.
This systematic closing of the media space dates back to the late 2011 incident in Zhanaozen. Striking oil workers drew considerable media attention and the ensuing violence – in which more than a dozen were killed by state security forces – was labeled a “massacre.”
In each ensuing year Freedom House’s annual chapter on press freedom in Kazakhstan has begun with some variation of this, from the 2015 Freedom of the Press report:
The Kazakh government sustained its multiyear media crackdown in 2014, prosecuting journalists for defamation and other offenses, issuing new laws to enable outlet closures and suspensions, and imposing harsh penalties for content violations and minor technical infractions.
Without a doubt, future reports on press freedom in Kazakhstan will begin with similar pronouncements.