The arrests of Serikzhan Mambetalin and Yermek Narymbayev – who are vocal online critics of President Nursultan Nazarbayev’s rule, but wield little on-the-ground influence to rally support against it – are symptomatic of the extent to which the authorities in Kazakhstan go to crush even limited, or virtual, dissent.
The two were arrested on October 12 on the basis of allegations of “their dissemination on social networks of information containing clear signs of fomenting ethnic strife, [and] insults against ethnic honor and dignity,” the Almaty police department said in a statement put out the following day.
They are being investigated under a broad charge covering incitement to social, ethnic, tribal or religious strife. The offense is punishable with a fine or up to 12 years in jail.
This is one of the charges under which opposition leader Vladimir Kozlov was jailed in 2012 for seven and a half years after being found guilty of fomenting social strife that prosecutors argued led to fatal unrest in the town of Zhanaozen.
Police did not further specify the nature of the suspicions against the two activists, but Mambetalin offered a clue before his arrest. Writing on his Facebook page two days earlier, he said they were under attack for citing the writings of Murat Telibekov, another activist who is known for his anti-regime views.
Telibekov, who heads an organization called the Union of Muslims of Kazakhstan (which has no official backing), is the target of another separate police inquiry on the same charges of fomenting strife.
Those investigations were initiated in July and related to the contents of a book Telibekov wrote 15 years ago, but which was never published, according to Kazakhstan’s Adil Soz press freedom watchdog.
“I believe it is stupidity to accuse [people] of fomenting strife for publishing excerpts of a non-existent book or for reposting that publication,” Zoya Narymbayeva, Yermek Narymbayev’s wife, commented to the Respublika-kaz.info website.
The book was a “pretext,” she suggested.
Narymbayeva said the authorities really “want to put pressure on them” to thwart their political activism, critical virtual postings, and attempts to set up a political party that they planned – appropriately in the circumstances – to call Facebook.
Narymbayev was last in prison in July, when he was jailed for 15 days on charges of holding an unsanctioned rally after laying flowers at a monument to independence in Almaty in protest at Kazakhstan’s close alliance with Russia.
Both he and Mambetalin are vocal online critics of the Nazarbayev administration, but – such token gestures notwithstanding – would appear to pose no threat to the established order on the ground.
• Narymbayev was sentenced to four years in prison in 2011 after being arrested at an unsanctioned May Day rally; he maintained a hunger strike in custody and was later transferred to a prison hospital, according to Freedom House.
• Narymbayev was jailed for 15 days in July for holding an unsanctioned rally to protest Kazakhstan’s close alliance with Russia after he lay flowers at a monument to independence in Almaty, EurasiaNet writes.
• Opposition leader Vladimir Kozlov was jailed in 2012 for seven and a half years for “fomenting” strike action, after prosecutors successfully argued his actions led to fatal unrest in Zhanaozen, where security forces opened fire on striking oil workers, killing at least 16.
• President Nursultan Nazarbaev, elected to a fifth term in April, has ruled Kazakhstan since 1989, two years before the country gained independence from the Soviet Union. He has since faced only token opposition.
