Freedom of expression
The authorities continued to use overly broad charges of “disseminating knowingly false information” and inciting ethnic, social, racial and religious discord under Articles 274 and 174 of the Criminal Code, respectively, to silence critical voices and suppress dissent. The local human rights community recorded at least 39 people imprisoned on politically motivated charges during the year, including human rights defenders, activists, bloggers and journalists.
Human rights defender Bakhytzhan Toregozhina was fined in July under Article 274 after she expressed concern for the deteriorating health of imprisoned opposition politician Marat Zhylanbayev (see below, Freedom of association) on her Facebook page. Marat Zhylanbayev had repeatedly held hunger strikes to protest against his treatment and conditions in detention. Administrative penalties, including fines and administrative detention, were imposed on Meirzhan Doskaraev, Marat Zhylanbayev’s lawyer, and at least two activists for raising similar concerns.
Blogger Temirlan Ensebek was detained in January and charged under Article 174 for a year-old social media post. The post, which featured excerpts from a widely circulated song with offensive lyrics about Russians, had not raised any undue concerns prior to his detention. He received a five-year non-custodial sentence in April following an unfair trial. The court banned him from publishing on social media, engaging in human rights activities, volunteering and speaking to media. The sentence was upheld on appeal.
Between January and April at least four supporters of Temirlan Ensebek were sentenced to administrative detention or fined for holding individual protests calling for his release. Five were detained and fined for protesting against the judge’s decision to restrict public access to the courtroom.
In July the UN Human Rights Committee in its Concluding Observations reiterated its concern about the broad formulation of the concepts of “extremism” and incitement of ethnic, social, racial and religious discord under Article 174 of the Criminal Code. The committee urged the authorities to narrow the scope of the legislation to ensure that it did not “suppress protected conduct and speech”.
In June and July, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs refused to renew the accreditations of 16 correspondents of Radio Azattyq, the Kazakh Service of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, on the grounds that they had violated the 2024 media law, which prohibits foreign journalists from reporting without accreditation. The journalists, who were all Kazakhstani nationals, had continued to work while a decision on their applications was pending. Radio Azattyq’s appeal against the decision by a court in the capital, Astana, in August to uphold the ministry’s decision against seven correspondents was pending at year’s end.
Freedom of peaceful assembly
In January the Constitutional Court ruled that permission to hold peaceful assemblies must not be automatically denied, although it reiterated the requirement for prior authorization. Nevertheless, local authorities still routinely refused to allow peaceful protests to take place. Civil society activists and members of the public continued to be detained and prosecuted for exercising their right to peaceful protest.
In February the statute of limitations in relation to assembly-related offences, which had allowed authorities to jail protesters long after the event, often to prevent them from participating in future protests, was reduced from 12 to two months. However, two members of the LGBTI NGO Feminita were sentenced to 10 days’ administrative detention, one at the end of February and one at the beginning of March, for organizing a protest nine months earlier. These sentences, together with a refusal to grant applications for an assembly, deterred NGOs from organizing a peaceful march for International Women’s Day on 8 March.
In August, five community activists detained in 2024 for planning a peaceful protest against a planned nuclear power station were convicted of calling for mass disturbances under Article 272.3 of the Criminal Code. They were sentenced to four years’ probation and banned from taking part in any public activities, such as attending demonstrations or press conferences, for five years. In November, an appeal court reduced their sentences to 30 months.
Freedom of association
NGOs and political opposition groups came under increasing pressure from the authorities, including President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, following the US administration’s decision to cut foreign assistance to groups promoting diversity, equality and integration. In April the president accused “supposedly human rights organizations, bloggers and journalists” of being sponsored from abroad to seek out negative undercurrents and blame the authorities.
In May the Ombudsperson publicly criticized the independent NGO Coalition against Torture for submitting “biased” and “distorted” information to the UN Special Rapporteur on torture. The coalition had responded to a routine annual call for submissions by UN Special Mechanisms. The Ombudsperson falsely claimed that the EU had paid for the submission.
In July the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention (WGAD) called for the immediate release of Marat Zhylanbayev, who had been sentenced to seven years’ imprisonment in 2023 for alleged membership of the arbitrarily banned political opposition movement Democratic Choice of Kazakhstan. WGAD found that his detention was arbitrary, his trial unfair, and that his “arrest and detention was based on discrimination resulting from his political opinion”.
LGBTI people’s rights
LGBTI people and NGOs were targeted by the authorities, including the president, as well as pro-government and other groups who accused them of using foreign funding to promote “immoral behaviour” and denigrate “traditional values”.
LGBTI NGO Feminita came under renewed attack by members of the Union of Parents and the Rahym charitable fund, who disrupted its training events on two occasions in February and accused the organizers and participants of being “foreign agents”. Police failed to investigate and prosecute the perpetrators; instead, the co-founders of Feminita were detained and fined for running an unregistered NGO.
In its Concluding Observations, the UN Human Rights Committee reiterated concerns about discrimination against LGBTI people in law and practice, together with the targeting, harassment and prosecutions of LGBTI NGOs and human rights defenders.
In October a parliamentary working group put forward legislative amendments banning LGBTI propaganda. The Senate approved the changes on 18 December and the president signed the amendments into law on 30 December.
Impunity
In May the OSCE’s Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights reported on its monitoring of trials held in 2022-2023, stemming from the January 2022 mass protests during which security forces committed serious human rights violations. The report noted the “stark disparity between the high number of civilian deaths, widespread allegations of torture and ill-treatment and the low number of prosecutions for these killings”. It also found that courts had failed “to address serious allegations of coercion, torture, and other unlawful means used to obtain statements from defendants and witnesses”.
Workers’ rights
No legislative or policy changes were adopted to address a rising trend in reported abuses of workers’ rights in the mining of rare earth minerals. A July briefing by the NGO Business and Human Rights Resource Centre recorded more such allegations in 2024 than during the previous five years combined.
Right to a healthy environment
Kazakhstan’s economy continued to be driven largely by oil production. Reliance on coal for electricity production grew and Kazakhstan planned to build 6 gigawatts of new coal capacity by 2030, despite environmental concerns and the pledge to achieve carbon neutrality by 2060. In September, President Tokayev appeared to be reneging on commitments to a green transition, declaring that climate change “appeared to be a massive fraud” and that Kazakhstan would remain reliant on coal.
