In February 2019, mass peaceful protests, unprecedented in their scale and nature of demands, were held in different regions of Kazakhstan. Protesters complained of poverty and corruption, demanding reforms, improvement of social security and the resignation of the President.
This report is a collective complaint on behalf of 129 citizens of Kazakhstan who have fallen victim to arbitrary detention, criminal prosecution, torture, ill-treatment, threats and surveillance. All were accused of supporting the peaceful opposition movement “Democratic Choice of Kazakhstan”.
On 25 June, 2018, the Kyrgyz court authorised the extradition of the well-known opposition blogger Muratbek Tungishbayev to Kazakhstan. On 26 June, 2018, late in the evening, security officers took Tungishbayev from the detention centre in an unknown direction.
On May 10, 2018, Kyrgyzstani security service officers detained Muratbek Tungishbayev, blogger from Kazakhstan, in Bishkek. He is currently being kept under arrest. Tungishbayev needs urgent eye surgery to save his eyesight. A criminal case has been launched against him in Kazakhstan.
On 10 May 2018, in Kazakhstan, the police dispersed peaceful protesters with the use of brute force. Participants in the protests were striving to draw the attention of the delegation of the EP to the problem of political prisoners and the practice of torture in the country’s detention centres.
The Kazakhstani court has banned the activities of the new opposition movement ‘Democratic Choice of Kazakhstan’. The slightest support of the DCK has been penalised with prison terms.
In the end of June 2015, the Open Dialog Foundation published a report ’Harassment of civil society in Kazakhstan’. The Foundation’s analyst, Katerina Savchenko, provided answers to some clarifying questions in an interview with a journalist of the Radio Azattyq, Kazis Toguzbayev.
