Kazak Privacy Law Vulnerable to Abuse
Media rights activists say legislation will curb journalists’ ability to dig up unpleasant facts.
Kazak Privacy Law Vulnerable to Abuse
Media rights activists say legislation will curb journalists’ ability to dig up unpleasant facts.
New legislation in Kazakstan could seriously restrict journalism by making it nearly impossible for reporters to gain access to information about public figures, say media rights defenders.
On November 11, the lower house of parliament passed a bill amending the current law protecting the individual’s right to privacy. The changes beef up protections against intrusions into areas of private life such as personal bank accounts and phone and postal communications, and also increase the penalties for breaking the law.
The bill now goes to the legislature’s upper chamber or Senate for approval, and then to President Nursultan Nazarbaev for the final sign-off.
Some of the changes will undoubtedly be welcomed by rights activists, such as measures making it harder for police investigators to use evidence gleaned from tapping, and punishing them if they rig or distort such evidence.
When the bill got its first airing in parliament on November 4, Deputy Justice Minister Marat Beketaev said the maximum penalties would be applicable when privacy rules were broken through dissemination in the public domain, including via the media.
Leading media activists like Seytkazy Mataev, head of the Union of Journalists, and Tamara Kaleeva of the Adil Soz free speech group have consistently opposed the bill, saying privacy safeguards must be accompanied by guarantees of the basic right to access information.
In a joint statement on October 28, Mataev and Kaleeva called for the law to retain the right to report on public figures, including those in government, and for defamation to be decriminalised. Otherwise, they said, the bill should be thrown out of parliament.
They were particularly concerned at the provision in the bill allowing a five year sentence for using media to disseminate information about an individual’s private life”.
Kaleeva told IWPR she believed that the law was really aimed at muzzling journalists.
“This law isn’t aimed at protecting ordinary people’s interests; it is designed to protect officials who have something to hide,” she said. “The most highly principled, talented journalists who do their job professionally are going to face prosecution.”
Vladimir Nekhoroshev, a member of parliament who backed the bill, said the intention was merely “to make journalists behave in a more orderly manner”.
“The journalist’s job is to be tenacious in gathering information that is in the public interest, but without forgetting to respect and empathise with those whose private lives he has to invade,” he said. “You can’t have freedom of speech without responsibility.”
Lawyer Sergei Utkin argued that Kazakstan should follow the example of similar legislation in Russia, where penalties are only applicable if information deemed to be private is publicised for personal gain. “That doesn’t apply to journalists,” he explained. I believe that in our own case we should either refrain from passing the law or else bring it into line with the Russian legislation.”
Expressing a view from outside, Sergei Rasov, an expert at the Centre for Political Methodology in Russia, warned that adopting the law could have a stultifying effect on media in Kazakstan.
“If this law is passed in Kazakstan, any negative – or even positive – information will have to be agreed with the individual featured in the article or TV programme,”said Rasov. “Otherwise an official will have every legal right to haul journalists over the coals for writing, say, about his bank accounts, his car, his business, or his wife’s stunning jewellery.”
Aydos Sarym, a political analyst based in Kazakstan, thinks there is a different, quite specific reason why the authorities were so keen on bringing in tougher legislation.
In 2007, President Nazarbaev’s son-in-law Rahat Aliev fled the country to escape criminal charges of kidnapping a banker. In autumn that year, a series of audio recordings appeared on the internet, ostensibly of senior Kazak figures admitting to a string of illegal actions. Aliev, by then in exile, was accused of leaking the material to get back at the authorities in Kazakstan.
Whatever their veracity, the recordings did serious damage to President Nazarbaev and his entourage, according to Sarym.
“To guard against this in future, the authorities are taking these preventive, albeit unpopular measures,” he said.
This has not been a good year for media freedom in Kazakstan. The Tasjargan newspaper has had to close down following legal action by a member of parliament who claimed to have been libelled, and the Respublika paper is facing a large fine after being found to have made inaccurate statements about a local bank.
In August, Ramazan Yesergepov, owner and editor of the Alma-Ata Info newspaper, was sentenced to three years in prison for divulging state secrets, after his paper carried an article about how members of Kazakstan’s security service had dealt with a company belonging to a local businessman implicated in a tax evasion case.
This summer, parliament passed a law designed to place limits on freedom of expression on the internet. The authorities said that by making the internet subject to the same rules as domestic media, they wanted to control violence, hate crime and pornography. Media activists retorted that this was an attempt to extend the arm of the state over the internet, the last bastion of independent news and free speech.
On November 11, the lower house of parliament passed a bill amending the current law protecting the individual’s right to privacy. The changes beef up protections against intrusions into areas of private life such as personal bank accounts and phone and postal communications, and also increase the penalties for breaking the law.
The bill now goes to the legislature’s upper chamber or Senate for approval, and then to President Nursultan Nazarbaev for the final sign-off.
Some of the changes will undoubtedly be welcomed by rights activists, such as measures making it harder for police investigators to use evidence gleaned from tapping, and punishing them if they rig or distort such evidence.
When the bill got its first airing in parliament on November 4, Deputy Justice Minister Marat Beketaev said the maximum penalties would be applicable when privacy rules were broken through dissemination in the public domain, including via the media.
Leading media activists like Seytkazy Mataev, head of the Union of Journalists, and Tamara Kaleeva of the Adil Soz free speech group have consistently opposed the bill, saying privacy safeguards must be accompanied by guarantees of the basic right to access information.
In a joint statement on October 28, Mataev and Kaleeva called for the law to retain the right to report on public figures, including those in government, and for defamation to be decriminalised. Otherwise, they said, the bill should be thrown out of parliament.
They were particularly concerned at the provision in the bill allowing a five year sentence for using media to disseminate information about an individual’s private life”.
Kaleeva told IWPR she believed that the law was really aimed at muzzling journalists.
“This law isn’t aimed at protecting ordinary people’s interests; it is designed to protect officials who have something to hide,” she said. “The most highly principled, talented journalists who do their job professionally are going to face prosecution.”
Vladimir Nekhoroshev, a member of parliament who backed the bill, said the intention was merely “to make journalists behave in a more orderly manner”.
“The journalist’s job is to be tenacious in gathering information that is in the public interest, but without forgetting to respect and empathise with those whose private lives he has to invade,” he said. “You can’t have freedom of speech without responsibility.”
Lawyer Sergei Utkin argued that Kazakstan should follow the example of similar legislation in Russia, where penalties are only applicable if information deemed to be private is publicised for personal gain. “That doesn’t apply to journalists,” he explained. I believe that in our own case we should either refrain from passing the law or else bring it into line with the Russian legislation.”
Expressing a view from outside, Sergei Rasov, an expert at the Centre for Political Methodology in Russia, warned that adopting the law could have a stultifying effect on media in Kazakstan.
“If this law is passed in Kazakstan, any negative – or even positive – information will have to be agreed with the individual featured in the article or TV programme,”said Rasov. “Otherwise an official will have every legal right to haul journalists over the coals for writing, say, about his bank accounts, his car, his business, or his wife’s stunning jewellery.”
Aydos Sarym, a political analyst based in Kazakstan, thinks there is a different, quite specific reason why the authorities were so keen on bringing in tougher legislation.
In 2007, President Nazarbaev’s son-in-law Rahat Aliev fled the country to escape criminal charges of kidnapping a banker. In autumn that year, a series of audio recordings appeared on the internet, ostensibly of senior Kazak figures admitting to a string of illegal actions. Aliev, by then in exile, was accused of leaking the material to get back at the authorities in Kazakstan.
Whatever their veracity, the recordings did serious damage to President Nazarbaev and his entourage, according to Sarym.
“To guard against this in future, the authorities are taking these preventive, albeit unpopular measures,” he said.
This has not been a good year for media freedom in Kazakstan. The Tasjargan newspaper has had to close down following legal action by a member of parliament who claimed to have been libelled, and the Respublika paper is facing a large fine after being found to have made inaccurate statements about a local bank.
In August, Ramazan Yesergepov, owner and editor of the Alma-Ata Info newspaper, was sentenced to three years in prison for divulging state secrets, after his paper carried an article about how members of Kazakstan’s security service had dealt with a company belonging to a local businessman implicated in a tax evasion case.
This summer, parliament passed a law designed to place limits on freedom of expression on the internet. The authorities said that by making the internet subject to the same rules as domestic media, they wanted to control violence, hate crime and pornography. Media activists retorted that this was an attempt to extend the arm of the state over the internet, the last bastion of independent news and free speech.
