Kazakstan Accused of Curbing OSCE's Human Rights Role

The first six months of Kazakstan’s chairmanship of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe, OSCE, have done nothing to make the country more democratic, rights activists say.

Human rights defenders argue that in some areas such as the right to freedom of assembly, confession and the press, things have actually got worse.

They also warn that by downplaying rights issues in its role as OSCE chair and focusing only on regional security matters, Kazakstan has lowered the standards the organisation sets itself.

Foreign Minister Kanat Saudabaev used a conference on the OSCE’s “human dimension” last month to praise his country’s achievements.

“The key institutions of democracy and civil society are fully in place, a democratic electoral system and an independent judiciary have been created, the media operate freely, and political parties and [non-government] public organisations have developed,” said Saudabaev, whose ministerial role makes him OSCE chairman-in-office.

Human rights defenders from Kazakstan attending the June 10 meeting in Copenhagen proceeded to launch a broadside, saying the claimed improvements were not in evidence.

The main concerns were outlined by Roza Akylbekova, who is acting head of the Kazakstan Bureau for Human Rights and Rule of Law – its director Yevgeny Zhovtis is in jail.

She said the procedures for setting up political parties were not open to all, and effectively came down to gaining official approval, while new legislation before parliament would set fines or detention as penalties for holding unauthorised public meetings. The freedom to practice one’s faith was also constrained by new regulations for missionaries visiting the country, and regular police raids on religious gatherings.

As for media freedom, Akylbekova said newspapers could be seized and print and broadcast outlets closed down on a technicality if their coverage was viewed as too critical of the authorities. Recent legislative changes had ignored requests to remove defamation as a criminal offence.

“Freedom of expression in Kazakstan is in a worse state than it was some ten years ago,” Rozlana Taukina of the Journalists in Trouble group told IWPR. “The international community isn’t aware of all the cases where freedom of expression has been violate, but that doesn’t really matter as it takes a tolerant view of those cases that are known and doesn’t take any principled action to press Kazakstan to live up to the democratic obligations it has undertaken.”

When the Kazak government was bidding for the OSCE chair, it specifically pledged to improve its record on civil and political rights. Its aspiration to take the rotating chairmanship, launched in 2003, was not a smooth ride, as some member states, notably the United States and Britain, questioned whether it was fit to chair the grouping given the concerns about elections judged as undemocratic, curbs on freedom of speech, an effective government monopoly of the media, mistreatment of political opponents, and other matters.

Experts accuse Kazakstan of using its time in the OSCE chair to direct the organisation’s attention almost exclusively towards security issues and conflict resolution, while doing little to fulfil the organisation’s mandate for building democracy and enshrining human rights in member states.

Foreign Minister Saudabaev made these priorities clear when Kazakstan took over the chair in January, saying special attention would be paid to resolving conflicts like Afghanistan and Nagorny Karabakh

Saudabaev has since met with Armenian and Azerbaijani leaders to discuss ways of negotiating an end to the protracted dispute over Karabakh, and has visited Kabul to talk about creating better security and combating the Afghan drugs trade.

However, leading political analyst Dosym Satpaev is sceptical that Kazakstan has much to contribute to efforts to end intractable conflicts.

“Kazakstan is fairly active on foreign policy, but it has no real levers of influence,” he said. As for the situation in Afghanistan, he said, “everyone realises the OSCE can’t resolve it, and Kazakstan itself has limited potential to do so”.

Meanwhile, the only substantive event that Kazakstan has organised in relation to human rights is the OSCE Conference on Tolerance and Non-Discrimination held in Astana towards the end of June.

In Satpaev’s view, even that initiative looked somewhat hollow.

“It all looks more like political PR; one gets the feeling that the main purpose of all this effort was to hold an OSCE summit in Astana,” Satpaev said.

An insider source in the OSCE, who did not want to be identified, told IWPR that the Kazak style of chairmanship had not set a very good precedent, and had lowering democratic standards needed to lead such an organisation.

“It isn’t going to be easy for the OSCE, because following Kazakstan’s chairmanship, different [lower] criteria will have to be applied to prospective chairs,” he said. “The democracy situation in Kazakstan has deteriorated significantly since the beginning of the year, and Kazakstan’s current role is probably to blame for that.”

Andrei Grishin is a staff member at the Kazakstan Bureau for Human Rights and Rule of Law.

This article was produced jointly under two IWPR projects: Building Central Asian Human Rights Protection & Education Through the Media, funded by the European Commission; and the Human Rights Reporting, Confidence Building and Conflict Information Programme, funded by the Foreign Ministry of Norway.

The contents of this article are the sole responsibility of IWPR and can in no way be taken to reflect the views of either the European Union or the Foreign Ministry of Norway.