[Congressional Record Volume 148, Number 84 (Friday, June 21, 2002)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E1129-E1130]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                  HUMAN RIGHTS CONCERNS IN KAZAKHSTAN

                                 ______
                                 

                       HON. CHRISTOPHER H. SMITH

                             of new jersey

                    in the house of representatives

                         Friday, June 21, 2002

  Mr. SMITH of New Jersey. Mr. Speaker, I rise to introduce a 
resolution that expresses deep concern about ongoing violations of 
human rights in Kazakhstan. President Nursultan Nazarbaev, the 
authoritarian leader of this energy-rich country, has been flagrantly 
flouting his OSCE commitments on democratization, human rights, and the 
rule of law, and thumbing his nose at Washington as well.
  In the 106th Congress, there was a near unanimous vote in the House 
for a resolution I introduced voicing dismay about general trends in 
Central Asia. We sent a strong signal to leaders and opposition groups 
alike in the region about where we stand.
  Since then, the overall situation has not gotten better--throughout 
the region, super presidents continue to dominate their political 
systems. But their drive to monopolize wealth and power while most 
people languish in poverty is finally producing a backlash. Today in 
Central Asia, things are stirring for the first time in a decade.
  Even in quasi-Stalinist Turkmenistan, an opposition movement-in-exile 
led by former high ranking government officials has emerged which 
openly proclaims its intention of getting rid of dictator Saparmurat 
Niyazov. In Kyrgyzstan, disturbances in March, when police killed six 
protesters calling for the release of a jailed parliamentarian, were 
followed by larger demonstrations that forced President Akaev in May to 
dismiss his government. The iron-fisted Islam Karimov of Uzbekistan, 
under considerable pressure from Washington, has made some limited 
concessions to domestic and international public opinion, sentencing 
policemen to prison terms for torturing detainees and formally lifting 
censorship.
  In Kazakhstan, however, President Nursultan Nazarbaev has reacted 
differently to domestic pressure and to Washington's calls for reforms 
to keep repression from breeding terrorism. Since last fall, Nazarbaev 
has cracked down hard, when his position became a little shakier. First 
we saw squabbles within the ruling--or should I say, ``royal''?--family 
burst out into the open when Nazarbaev demoted his powerful son-in-law. 
Then a new opposition movement emerged, headed by former officials who 
called for urgent reforms. Two of the leaders of that movement are now 
in prison. Subsequently, Kazakhstan's prime minister had to acknowledge 
the existence of $1 billion stashed in a Swiss bank account under 
Nazarbaev's name. Some of the few opposition legislators allowed into 
parliament have demanded more information about the money and about any 
other possible hoards in foreign banks.
  This would be a scandal in any country. But with a consistency worthy 
of a nobler goal, Nazarbaev's regime has for years stifled the 
opposition and independent media. And as detailed in a recent 
Washington Post story, which I ask to be inserted for the Record, 
Kazakh authorities have recently intensified their assault on those few 
remaining outlets, employing methods that can only be described as 
grotesque and revolting. In one case, the editor of an opposition 
newspaper found a decapitated dog hanging outside her office. Attached 
to a screwdriver stuck into its body was a message that read ``there 
won't be a next time.'' On May 23, the State Department issued a 
statement expressing ``deep concern'' that these assaults ``suggest an 
effort to intimidate political opposition leaders in Kazakhstan and the 
independent media and raise serious questions about the safety of the 
independent media in Kazakhstan.'' That statement did not have the 
desired effect--last week, someone left a human skull on a staircase in 
the building where the editorial office of another newspaper is 
located.
  Mr. Speaker, after September 11, the U.S. Government moved to 
consolidate relationships with Central Asian states, seeking 
cooperation in the battle with terrorism. But Washington also made 
plain that we expected to see some reform in these entrenched 
dictatorships, or we would all have to deal with consequences in the 
future. Nursultan Nazarbaev has ignored this call. Increasingly nervous 
about revelations of high-level corruption, he is obviously determined 
to do anything necessary to remain in power and to squelch efforts to 
inform Kazakhstan's public of his misdeeds. But even worse, he seems 
convinced that he can continue with impunity as his goons brutally 
threaten and assault the brave men and women who risk being journalists 
in a country so hostile to free speech.
  Mr. Speaker, against this backdrop, I am introducing this resolution, 
which expresses concern about these trends, calls on Kazakhstan's 
leadership to observe its OSCE commitments and urges the U.S. 
Government to press Kazakhstan more seriously. I hope my colleagues 
will support this resolution and I look forward to their response.

         [Washington Post Foreign Service, Mon., June 10, 2002]

                      New Repression in Kazakhstan


       Journalists Targeted After President Implicated in Scandal

                            (By Peter Baker)

       Almaty, Kazakhstan.--The message could not have been 
     clearer even without the note. In the courtyard of Irina 
     Petrushova's opposition newspaper office, a decapitated dog 
     was hung by its paws, a green-handled screwdriver plunged 
     into its torso with a computer-printed warning attached to 
     it.

[[Page E1130]]

       ``There won't be a next time.''
       The dog's missing head was left along with a similar note 
     at Petrushova's house. Three nights later, someone threw 
     three molotov cocktails into her office and burned it to the 
     ground.
       The political climate in this oil-rich former Soviet 
     republic has taken a decidedly ominous turn in recent weeks, 
     ever since the revelation that the country's president, 
     Nursultan Nazarbayev, secretly stashed $1 billion of state 
     money in a Swiss bank account 6 years ago. As the scandal 
     blossomed, opposition leaders were suddenly arrested, 
     newspapers and television stations shut down, and critical 
     journalists beaten in what foes of the government consider a 
     new wave of repression.
       What inspectors and regulators have not accomplished, 
     mysterious vandals have. One of the country's leading 
     television stations was knocked off the air when its cable 
     was sliced in the middle of the night. Shortly after it was 
     repaired, the cable was rendered useless again when someone 
     shot through it.
       ``Everything that's been achieved over the last 10 years, 
     it's been wiped out,'' Petrushova lamented.
       ``This political system we have is still Soviet,'' said 
     Yevgeny Zhovits, director of the Kazakhstan International 
     Bureau for Human Rights and the Rule of Law. ``By its spirit, 
     by its nature, by its attitude toward personal freedom, it's 
     still Soviet.''
       The tale of intrigue emerging in Kazakhstan, while familiar 
     across the former Soviet Union, takes on special significance 
     in Central Asia, a region that has become far more important 
     to the United States as it fights a war in nearby 
     Afghanistan. The case also sheds some light on the tangled 
     world of oil, money and politics in a country with massive 
     energy reserves.
       The U.S. Embassy and the State Department have issued 
     statements condemning the pattern of events and fretting 
     about the state of democracy in a country still run by its 
     last Communist boss. But many reformers in Kazakhstan worry 
     that the West has effectively turned its eyes away from human 
     rights abuses to maintain the international coalition against 
     terrorism.
       ``All this is happening with the silent consent of the 
     West,'' said Assylbeck Kozhakhmetov, a leading figure in 
     Democratic Choice for Kazakhstan, an opposition party founded 
     last year. Until Sept. 11, Nazarbayev's government worried 
     about offending the West, he noted, but not anymore. ``The 
     ostrich party of Western democracies actually unties the 
     hands of dictators.''
       Nazarbayev, a burly, 61-year-old former steel mill blast-
     furnace operator, has run this giant, dusty country of 17 
     million people with an authoritarian style. Nazarbayev was a 
     former member of the Soviet Politburo who took over as head 
     of the republic in 1990, became president after independence 
     in 1991, and continued to dominate Kazakhstan through 
     uncompetitive elections and a referendum extending his term.
       His relationship with oil companies has prompted 
     investigations in Switzerland and the United States as 
     prosecutors in both countries probe whether an American 
     lobbyist helped steer millions of dollars in oil commissions 
     to him and other Kazakh leaders.
       The long-brewing questions about such transfers and rumors 
     of foreign bank accounts erupted into a full-blown scandal in 
     April when Nazarbayev's prime minister admitted to parliament 
     that the president diverted $1 billion to a secret Swiss bank 
     account in 1996. The money came from the sale that year of a 
     20 percent stake in the valuable Tengiz offshore oil fields 
     to Chevron.
       The prime minister, Imangali Tasmagambetov, said that 
     Nazarbayev had sent the money abroad because he worried that 
     such a large infusion of cash into Kazakhstan would throw the 
     currency into a tailspin. Although he never disclosed the 
     secret fund to parliament, Nazarbayev used it twice to help 
     stabilize the country during subsequent financial crises, 
     Tasmagambetov said.
       In an inter-view last week, a top government official 
     dismissed the significance of the revelation and the 
     resulting furor.
       ``The so-called Kazakh-gate, the government officially 
     explained this,'' said Ardak Doszham, the deputy minister of 
     information. ``There was a special reserve account set up by 
     the government. It's a normal account that can be managed by 
     officials appointed by the government. It's not managed by 
     individuals. The money that goes into it is state money, and 
     it's supposed to be used to meet the needs of the state.''
       Asked who knew about it, Doszham could identify only three 
     men, Nazarbayev, the prime minister and the chairman of the 
     national bank. Asked why lawmakers were never informed, he 
     said, ``It was impossible to raise this issue before 
     parliament because it would have elicited many questions.''
       But opposition leaders and journalists said Nazarbayev 
     finally revealed the account this spring only after they 
     pushed Swiss prosecutors for information. The opposition and 
     journalists said they believe the president announced the $1 
     billion fund only as a smoke screen to obscure other matters 
     still under investigation by the Swiss and U.S. prosecutors.
       ``All around there is bribe-taking and stealing and 
     mafia,'' said Serikbolsyn Abdildin, the head of the Communist 
     Party and one of two parliament deputies whose information 
     request to prosecutors preceded the announcement. ``There's 
     corruption in the top echelon of power.'' The disclosure of 
     the $1 billion Swiss fund was designed to ``fool public 
     opinion,'' he said.
       The disclosures have coincided with an escalating series of 
     troublesome incidents for those who do not defer to the 
     government.
       Just days before Tasmagambetov's speech to parliament, 
     Kazakh authorities arrested opposition politician Mukhtar 
     Abilyazov, while his colleague, Ghalymzhan Zhaqiyanov, 
     avoided a similar fate only by fleeing into the French 
     Embassy here in Almaty, the former capital, two days later.
       After assurances from Kazakh authorities, he left the 
     embassy, and promptly was also taken into custody. The 
     government insisted it was pursuing embezzlement charges 
     against the two, both founding members of Democratic Choice. 
     The opposition called it blatant harassment.
       Other opposition figures began to feel the heat as well. 
     While independent media in Kazakhstan have often experienced 
     difficulty in the decade since independence, a string of 
     frightening episodes convinced many journalists that they 
     were being targeted.
       The government began enforcing a five-year-old law 
     requiring television stations to ensure that 50 percent of 
     their broadcasts were aired in the native Kazakh tongue, a 
     language that in practice remains secondary to Russian here. 
     Most television stations cannot afford to develop such 
     programming and prefer to buy off-the-shelf material from 
     Russia, including dubbed Western television shows and movies. 
     As government agents swarmed in and began monitoring channels 
     this spring, they began seizing licenses of those stations 
     that did not comply.
       Similarly, inspectors showed up at newspaper offices 
     demanding to see registration papers and suspending those 
     publications that did not have everything in order. Some that 
     did not list their addresses properly were abruptly shut 
     down. Printing houses began refusing to publish other papers, 
     and one printing house was burned down in unclear 
     circumstances.
       Tamara Kaleyeva, president of the International Foundation 
     for Protection of Speech here, said about 20 newspapers have 
     been forced to stop publishing and about 20 television 
     stations have been shut down or face closure.
       ``It appears the Swiss accounts are the reason for a 
     terrible persecution against free speech,'' she said. Added 
     Rozlana Taukina, president of the Central Asia Independent 
     Mass Media Association, ``The country is turning into an 
     authoritarian regime.''
       Doszham, the deputy minister, denied any political 
     motivations behind the recent actions. Television stations 
     had been flouting the language law, he said, and the 
     government has suspended about seven or eight, and gone to 
     court to recall the licenses of another six or seven. 
     Similarly, he said, newspapers had been violating 
     requirements. ``The law is harsh,'' he said, ``but the law is 
     the law.''
       Even more harsh, however, has been an unofficial but often 
     violent crackdown. It is not known who is orchestrating it. 
     Bakbytzhan Ketebayev, president of Tan Broadcasting Co., 
     whose Tan TV station was among the best known in Kazakhstan, 
     has been off the air for two months following repeated 
     attacks on his cable. Even after it was repaired following 
     the gunshots, it was damaged yet again when someone drove 
     three nails in it. ``Once it's an accident, twice it may be 
     an accident,'' he said. ``But three times is a trend.''
       At the newspaper Soldat, which means soldier in Russian but 
     is also a play on words in Kazakh meaning ``that one demands 
     to speak,'' the assault was more personal. One day in late 
     May, four young men burst into the newspaper office and beat 
     two workers there, bashing one woman's head so hard she 
     remains in the hospital. They also took the computer 
     equipment.
       Ermuram Bali, the editor, said the attack came the day 
     before the weekly was to run the second of two installments 
     reprinting a Seymour Hersh piece from the New Yorker about 
     oil and corruption in Kazakhstan. ``This is the last warning 
     against you,'' he said the assailants told his staff. Other 
     journalists have been physically attacked as well.
       And then there was Petrushova and the headless dog. Like 
     Soldat, her newspaper, the Republic Business Review, had 
     written about the scandal. Then the mutilated animal was 
     found May 19, and finally the newspaper office was set aflame 
     on May 22.
       Petrushova suspects state security agencies were behind the 
     incidents but cannot prove it. ``The throne started to waver, 
     and in order to hold it in place, all sorts of measures are 
     being used,'' she said. Now she works out of borrowed offices 
     at Tan TV headquarters, putting out the newspaper on her own 
     typographical machine and stapling each issue. ``It's just 
     like it was in the time of the Soviet Union.''

     

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