Sanat Dosov, a 46-year-old social activist and entrepreneur from Aktobe, Kazakhstan, was sentenced to 3 years in a penal colony for insulting Russian President Vladimir Putin on social media. Dosov has reportedly called Putin a ‘terrorist’ and a ‘fascist’, and shared a meme where Putin is presented next to notorious former communist leaders Joseph Stalin and Vladimir Lenin. Dosov was convicted under Article 174 of the Kazakh criminal code…
Human rights defenders Max Bokayev and Talgat Ayan were sentenced on November 28 in Kazakhstan to 5 years in prison for organizing peaceful protests earlier this year and publishing critical posts on Facebook. The charges ranged from ‘institution of social discord’ under Article 174 of the Criminal Code, ‘dissemination of knowingly false information’ under Article 274, to ‘violation of the procedure of organisation and…
Kazakhstan sentenced Serikzhan Mambetalin and Ermek Narymbaev to 2 and 3 years in prison respectively, over criticizing the government on Facebook posts. The activists were convicted by the Almalinskii District Court in Almaty on January 22, 2016, under charges of “circulating information in social media that contains elements of inciting social discord” according to Article 174 of the Kazakh Criminal Code . The activists…
Igor Sychev, a 26-year-old Kazakh blogger, was sentenced on November 18 by the Ridder City Court to 5 years imprisonment over raising the question of whether the eastern Kazakhstan region should secede and join Russia “the way Ukraine’s Crimea did” in an online poll. Sychev was accused of promoting “separatist sentiment”. The poll was published on the popular Russian social networking…
Activist Ermek Narymbaev has been sentenced to 20 days in jail by Kazakh authorities, after the human rights lawyer wrote on his personal Facebook page that he was organising a peaceful protest in the financial capital Almaty. The move has been condemned by human rights groups and the United Nations, who argued that the charge violated Narymbaev’s right to freedom…
