To Silence or Not to Silence: Blogging in Kazakhstan

By Yekaterina Syrtsova, Associate Account Manager, The PBN Company, Almaty

At the end of April the Majilis, Kazakhstan’s lower chamber of Parliament, unanimously passed draft amendments to the media law which, if enacted, would give authorities the right to block any local or foreign website in Kazakhstan on the grounds of “violating national legislation.”

Aimed at regulating “online resources” such as blogs, forums, social networks, chat rooms and even online shops and libraries, the law gives them all the legal status of “media outlet.”  The Prosecutor General of Kazakhstan would have the right to issue a decision to block a website, and the decision would then have to be approved by the City Court of Astana.

According to a post on NewEurasia.net, a blog network on Central Asia, “many bloggers believe that the government wants a legal tool for filtering the web.” For example, LiveJournal, a leading Russian-language blog platform, has been blocked in Kazakhstan since early October last year without any official explanation.

Many bloggers say that the draft amendments to Kazakhstan’s media law are an unprecedented violation of freedom of speech. On May 13, Kazakh bloggers plan to hold a demonstration protesting against the draft law - all Internet users are being urged to log off of websites with a .kz domain name.

The irony of the draft law is that the Kazakh government has been trying to encourage official blogging.  At the beginning of 2009, Prime Minister Karim Masimov launched a personal blog, and he asked other ministers to host and maintain blogs on their respective official ministry and state agency websites. There are currently 30 Q&A format blogs including Masimov’s, although how effective they actually are remains to be seen - there have been complaints that not all questions are being published and/or answered.

Some Kazakh bloggers believe that the draft media law might actually be an effort on the part of President Nursultan Nazarbaev to bolster his personal democratic credentials in a round-about way on the eve of the country’s OSCE chairmanship next year, NewEurasia.net reports.  There is speculation that Nazarbaev may ultimately veto the law to earn himself points for promoting freedom of speech.

Before the draft law makes it to President Nazarbaev’s desk, it has to be approved by the Senate.  If the amendments are passed and Nazarbayev gives the law his stamp of approval, Kazakhstan is likely to join the Internet Enemies list maintained by Reporters Without Borders, which includes the likes of Belarus, Syria, North Korea and Iran - hardly auspicious company for the chairman-elect of the OSCE.

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