Central Asia: Critiquing Regimes During a Crisis
Paradoxically, it is during a crisis that governments in Central Asia are least likely to listen to criticism but most need to hear it.
Desperate times call for desperate measures. Around the world in 2020, most governments enacted various restrictions in response to the coronavirus pandemic. These have run the gamut from state of emergency-backed lockdown orders and travel restrictions to mask mandates. In democratic states, various voices have hyperbolically decried government efforts to combat the pandemic as creeping authoritarianism; meanwhile, autocratic states have patted themselves on the back for effectively putting their already tight government control of people and their lives to good use.
In other places – like Central Asia – governments have both enacted some reasonable measures while also cracking down on critics under the cover of the pandemic. Never waste a good crisis, as the saying goes. Paradoxically, it is during a crisis that governments in Central Asia are least likely to listen to criticism but most need to hear it. “What’s not working? What do people want? What do people need?” are vital questions for governing during a crisis unlike any other in modern times.
In a recent report, the International Partnership for Human Rights (IPHR) documented the human rights impact of government responses to the coronavirus pandemic in Central Asia. In the report’s introduction, they mince no words: “The global Covid-19 pandemic has resulted in growing restrictions on fundamental rights in Central Asia, as the authorities of the region have limited such rights in ways that go beyond what is justified on public health grounds.”
Where is the line between necessary, though harsh, public safety restrictions and authoritarian governments opportunistically taking advantage of a crisis? In Central Asia, the line is most clearly drawn between policies directly addressing the virus and its spread and those aimed at punishing dissent. States of emergency and lockdowns, which restrict people’s freedom of movement, certainly put stress on people’s rights but these are not the measures with which most human rights advocates have taken issue.
While some measures are certainly justified amid the pandemic crisis, others are arguably not: stifling discussion of COVID-19 on social media platforms, harassing critics of government actions and inactions, and pushing through laws without debate.
Kazakhstan is a prime example of enacting some necessary measures while also taking advantage of a crisis for political purposes.
On March 16, 2020, Nur-Sultan introduced a state of emergency, which lasted until May 11. During the state of emergency, the country’s international borders were shut, large cities closed off, and movement within cities restricted to only necessary trips. A second lockdown from early July to mid-August was less strict. During both lockdowns, there was considerable public criticism of the government, often for not doing enough in response to the pandemic.
The most dramatic case was that of Alnur Ilyashev, an activist found guilty in June of the “dissemination of knowingly false information that threatens public order during the state of emergency.” He was given a sentence of three years’ probation and banned from activism for five years.
In March, as Kazakhstan settled into lockdown, First President Nursultan Nazarbayev had appealed to the country’s businessmen to pool funds to fight the virus. Nazarbayev’s relatives – for example his daugher Dinara and her banker husband Timur Kulibayev – are among the country’s richest people. The pool was relatively shallow; ultimately the fund raised just 33.9 billion Kazakh tenge (about $80 million). The money was dolled out mostly as in-kind payments to about half a million families. Eurasianet referred to the payouts as essentially “handouts” from businesses closely linked to the ruling Nur Otan party. The fund ran dry by early July.
For comparison, the value of three luxury London properties allegedly belonging to the family of Dariga Nazarbayeva, another of Nazarbayev’s daughters, is $80 million according to a BBC report.
In late March, when the fund had managed to pull together just about $41 million, Ilyashev wrote on Facebook: “A mountain gave birth to a mouse.” In another post, he called Nur Otan – which Nazarbayev continues to lead even after resigning the presidency in March 2019 – a party of “crooks and thieves.”
For those words, Ilyashev has been banned from activism for five years. It’s hard to view that course of events as anything but silencing a critic. Kazakh authorities have punished other civil society activists and dissidents over the years for Facebook postings or blog posts; the only difference here was that because the “violations” occurred during a state of emergency, the sentence was more strict.
Another example of the Kazakh state making use of the moment to punish a critic is the absurdist drama that unfolded after Asya Tulesova knocked the hat off a police officer who was manhandindling her during the breakup of a protest in Almaty in June. The incident occurred after the end of Kazakhstan’s state of emergency and lockdown, when activists and oppositionists gathered to protests the first anniversary of Tokayev’s presidency. Tulesova in 2019 had been arrested for staging a protest at the Almaty marathon, unfurling banners that read “you cannot run from the truth” and “I have a choice.” In June 2020, as police pushed activists into vans, Tulesova fell to the ground and with her fell a policeman’s cap. For “insults” and “violence” she was given a year and a half of probation and a $130 fine.
While the Tulesova and Ilyashev examples are the most prominent, they are not the only such cases. IPHR notes that “Several bloggers and activists have been investigated on criminal charges of knowingly disseminating ‘false’ information (under Criminal Code article 274) during the pandemic” and “numerous civil society activists, journalists, bloggers, medical workers and other citizens have faced retaliatory measures for social media posts challenging the government’s handling of this crisis.”
One case that received less attention but drives home the point is that of Duman Aitzhanov: In late March a criminal case was levied against Aitzhanov, a doctor in Almaty region. In January 2020 he had shared a video with friends via WhatsApp in which he claimed to know of 70 people infected in Almaty; by the end of January he had issued a new video statement refuting his earlier claim, which many believed to have been the result of government pressure.
Kazakhstan did not officially record any cases of the coronavirus until mid-March.
The case against Aitzhanov was dropped in June, with the police saying no crime had been committed but no one acknowledging the elephant in the room: Was he right? Had there been infections before March in Kazakhstan?
Here is the practical problem with using a public health crisis as cover to crack down on dissent: Who else was silenced by the example set by the state’s hassling of Aitzhanov in January? The freedom of speech, however inconvenient for those in power, is important precisely because it enables people to say inconvenient truths.