Human Rights Watch Submission to the Universal Periodic Review of Kazakhstan

Introduction

1. This submission details Human Rights Watch’s key concerns regarding Kazakhstan’s compliance with international human rights standards since its last Universal Periodic Review (UPR) in November 2019. On that occasion, Kazakhstan said it was “committed to zero tolerance for acts of torture and violence;” that it had “adopted numerous fundamental reforms to its justice system aimed at…ensuring the rule of law;” and that “prevention of domestic violence against women and children was a national priority.”[1]
2. Despite these and other promises of reform, serious human rights abuses have persisted. Kazakh authorities have engaged in a crackdown on government critics using overbroad “extremism”-related charges, with increasing numbers being sent to prison for simply exercising their rights to freedom of expression and assembly. Authorities continue to excessively restrict freedom of association, including for trade unions.
3. In January 2022, anti-government protests rocked Kazakhstan, setting off a cascade of human rights violations by the authorities, including excessive use of force against protesters, arbitrary arrest and detention, and ill-treatment and torture of detainees.
4. On a positive note, Kazakhstan acceded to the Second Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights in April 2022, and in February 2023, signed the Third Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child.

Conduct of Police and Security Forces

5. Authorities used lethal force to respond to protests and violence in January 2022. At least 232 people, including 19 security force members, died in the violence. Human Rights Watch documented how Kazakh security forces used excessive force on at least four occasions between January 4 and 6, resulting in 10 people being shot dead, as well as lethal force against protesters and rioters who posed no immediate threat.[2]
6. Kazakhstan’s investigations into the January events have been one-sided, leading to over 1,200 convictions of protesters and others, with only a few dozen law enforcement officers “brought to criminal responsibility,” according to the Prosecutor General’s office.[3] In some cities, including Kyzylorda and Shymkent, authorities closed investigations into the deaths of people killed in those cities during the January events on grounds that the actions of law enforcement officers did not constitute a crime.[4]
7. Kazakhstan has rejected calls to carry out a genuinely independent investigation into human rights abuses committed during and after the events of January 2022.
8. Proposed UPR recommendations for Kazakhstan:

• Launch a transparent, impartial, and effective investigation into human rights violations committed during and after the January 2022 events;
• Invite accountability experts from the United Nations Human Rights Office and from the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe to assess whether the steps taken by the Kazakh authorities correspond to an independent human rights investigation in line with international standards and if they do not, to seek support and assistance to strengthen and bring the response measures in line with international standards.

Criminal Justice, Torture

9. Despite Kazakhstan’s stated commitment to “zero-tolerance approach to torture and other acts of violence,” and adopting recommendations during its last UPR to conduct “timely, transparent and comprehensive investigations into and prosecutions of reported incidents of torture,”[5] a serious lack of accountability for torture persists.
10. Hundreds of people detained in connection with the January 2022 events have described ill-treatment or torture, explaining that police beat and burned them, administered electric shocks, and in some cases sexually assaulted them, by raping them or threatening rape.[6] At least six people died in pretrial detention centers, according to official figures.
11. Twenty-three police officers have been convicted for torture in connection with the January 2022 events so far, but dozens of other torture investigations have been closed on grounds that the allegations were “unsubstantiated.” Kazakhstan’s Coalition Against Torture, a group of human rights organizations and independent experts, reported that 283 people filed complaints of ill-treatment or torture in 2023.
12. Proposed UPR recommendations for Kazakhstan:

• Comply with their international legal obligations and effectively and impartially investigate allegations of torture, ill-treatment, and deaths in detention, as part of addressing the problem of impunity for torture;
• Reopen any investigations into allegations of ill-treatment and torture that were made in the aftermath of the January 2022 events that were later suspended or closed on grounds there was “no evidence of a crime;”
• Provide effective remedy, redress, and rehabilitation to the victims of torture and ill-treatment or to their families;
• Implement in full the recommendations issued by the Committee Against Torture after its review of Kazakhstan in May 2023;
• Ratify the Rome Statute and implement the statute in national legislation, including by incorporating provisions to cooperate promptly and fully with the International Criminal Court and to investigate and prosecute genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes before its national courts in accordance with international law;
• Facilitate the visit requested by the UN Special Rapporteur on torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.

Civil Society

13. Kazakhstan supported recommendations to “guarantee an enabling environment for civil society activities”[7] at its last UPR but has tried to limit the operating space for human rights activism in Kazakhstan since then.
14. In December 2020 and January 2021, tax authorities targeted over a dozen leading nongovernmental groups with fines and suspensions for allegedly violating rules for reporting on foreign grants. After sustained public outcry, authorities in February 2021 dropped the fines and suspension decisions.
15. In September 2023, the Kazakhstan government published a registry of individuals “receiving money or property from foreign states, international and foreign organizations, foreigners and stateless persons.”[8]
16. Proposed UPR recommendations for Kazakhstan:
    • Uphold freedom of association and allow civil society groups and human rights defenders to carry out their important work without fear of harassment or retaliation;
    • Abolish the “foreign funding register” and refrain from considerations of “foreign agent”-style legislation and other measures to discredit or obstruct the work of independent civil society organizations, activists and media.

Political opposition activism

17. Political opposition activists in Kazakhstan face government interference, harassment, and politically motivated prosecution. In the last six months, there has been an increase in arrests and criminal prosecutions of individuals accused of participating in and financing peaceful opposition groups that courts in Kazakhstan have labelled “extremist” and banned, such as the Democratic Choice of Kazakhstan (DVK) and Koshe Party, in violation of their right to freedom of expression and association.
18. Efforts by activists to register the “Alga, Kazakhstan!” opposition party have been unsuccessful over the last two years, with the Justice Ministry rejecting their applications no less than two dozen times as of this writing.
19. On November 30, 2023, an Astana court sentenced Marat Zhylanbaev, the head of the unregistered “Alga, Kazakhstan!” party, to seven years in prison on charges of membership in a banned extremist organization and financing extremist activities.[9] Asylbek Zhamuratov, another founding member of the Alga, Kazakhstan! initiative group, was arrested in late November 2023, on the same charges. Duman Mukhammadkarim, a journalist and activist who interviewed the exiled opposition figure and banker Mukhtar Ablyazov on his Youtube channel, is currently on trial also on the same charges.[10]
20. On April 10, 2023, an Almaty court convicted Zhanbolat Mamay, the head of the unregistered Democratic Party of Kazakhstan, on charges of organizing mass riots, insulting law enforcement officers, and disseminating knowingly false information, and sentenced him to a suspended six-year prison sentence.[11]
21. Despite Kazakhstan supporting at least six recommendations at its last UPR to amend the charge of “inciting discord” under article 174 of the criminal code, [12] authorities have persisted in using it to silence government critics.
22. Proposed UPR recommendations for Kazakhstan:

• Release Marat Zhylanbaev and lift all restrictions imposed on Zhanbolat Mamay and vacate their criminal convictions, imposed after politically motivated prosecutions;
• Release Duman Mukhammadkarim and Asylbek Zhamuratov and drop the politically motivated and unfounded criminal charges against them, ending any prosecutions;
• Revise the overbroad definition of “extremism” to bring it in line with Kazakhstan’s international obligations; cease using criminal charges of “membership in a banned extremist organization” (art. 405) and “inciting discord” (art. 174) to target individuals for behavior or speech that is protected under international human rights law;
• Seek an independent, impartial review of the court-imposed bans on DVK and the Koshe Party; commission an independent review of all convictions handed down on charges of organizing or participating in, or financing, a banned “extremist” organization.

Freedom of Expression

23. Media workers continue to regularly face harassment, arbitrary arrest, physical attack, and prosecution, despite Kazakhstan’s support for multiple recommendations to “fully protect freedom of expression” during its last UPR.[13]
24. Between December 2022 and February 2023, media offices were vandalized, and journalists’ cars and apartments were attacked or set on fire.[14]
25. On May 13, 2024, an administrative court in Almaty found Jamila Maricheva, the founder of ProTenge, a media project investigating government spending, guilty of “spreading false information” and fined her 73,840 Tenge. Maricheva had uploaded a post on Facebook expressing her concern about how several dozen colleagues at Radio Azattyk were being denied accreditation by the Information Ministry.
26. On July 3, 2023, a Turkestan regional court sentenced journalist Amangeldy Batyrbaev to 20 days’ detention on administrative charges of defamation for a Facebook post about a deputy in parliament.[15] In February 2023, the journalist Makhambet Abzhan was sentenced to nine years in prison on charges of “distributing deliberately false information” and “extortion.”[16]
27. Proposed UPR recommendations for Kazakhstan:
    • Respect the right to freedom of expression, and ensure a free press is able to operate with media workers, including bloggers free from harassment and undue prosecution;
    • Thoroughly and impartially investigate attacks on media workers and hold the perpetrators accountable;
    • Cease harassing independent journalists and decriminalize the offense of “disseminating knowingly false information” and “insult,” which is not in line with international standards.

Freedom of Assembly

28. At its last UPR, Kazakhstan supported at least fifteen recommendations[17] to “guarantee the freedom of peaceful assembly”[18] or to “review the public assembly law”[19] to bring it in line with international standards. A new law on peaceful assemblies, adopted in 2020, continues to heavily restrict the right to peaceful assembly. People who try to peacefully protest in Kazakhstan are detained, fined, or sentenced to short-term custodial sentences. Activists are also routinely subjected to surveillance and preventative arrests or short-term detention in advance of publicly announced protests.
29. Ethnic Kazakhs who intermittently protest outside the Chinese consulate in Almaty over the detention or forcible disappearance of their loved ones in China also face harassment and occasional arrest. Almaty city authorities continued to interfere in activists’ efforts to protest on March 8, International Women’s Day.
30. Proposed UPR recommendations for Kazakhstan:

• Introduce amendments to the new law on public assemblies that genuinely ensure the right to peaceful protest;
• Allow people in Kazakhstan to participate in peaceful protests without fear of arrest or police harassment and interference;
• Ensure that the authorities’ measures to police protests are carried out in accordance with international human rights standards.

Labor Rights

31. Authorities in Kazakhstan continue to obstruct worker efforts to organize and register independent trade unions, despite supporting several recommendations to “amend legislation… to ease the… registration and operation of independent trade unions.”[20]. Spontaneous strikes occur with regularity and courts often issue rulings finding spontaneous strikes illegal. Trade union leaders complain of company and state retaliation in response to independent worker organizing and participation in strikes, including dismissal.[21]
32. Authorities have ignored a May 2021 UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention decision calling for the immediate release of the imprisoned labor activist Erzhan Elshibaev. On September 29, 2022, he was sentenced to an additional seven-year prison sentence on charges of disobeying and inciting others to disobey prison administration.
33. Proposed UPR recommendations for Kazakhstan:

• Ensure that independent trade unions can register and carry out their activities without fear of retaliation or forced closure, including the independent Industrial Trade Union of Fuel and Energy Workers and the Congress of Independent Trade Unions of Kazakhstan;
• Implement in full the conclusions of the ILO’s Committee on the Application of Standards for violations of the Freedom of Association and Protection of the Right to Organise Convention;
• Release Erzhan Elshibaev, in fulfilment of the conclusion of the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention on his case.

Violence against Women and Girls

34. Domestic violence remains a widespread and underreported problem, with impunity for family abuse the norm.
35. On April 15, 2024, President Tokayev signed a new law criminalizing battery and light bodily harm, the offenses most common in cases of domestic violence in Kazakhstan. Notably, the law failed to make domestic violence a stand-alone criminal offense, despite Kazakhstan’s pledges[22] during its last UPR to “adopt legislation that criminalizes all forms of violence against women, including domestic violence.”[23]
36. Official statistics on reported cases of family abuse are alarming. The Prosecutor General’s office estimates that about 80 women die annually from domestic violence and over 4,150 women suffer light to serious bodily harm at the hands of the perpetrator.[24]
37. Proposed UPR recommendations for Kazakhstan:

• End impunity for violence against women; explicitly criminalize domestic violence in domestic laws; ensure that women facing abuse, especially in rural areas, have access to support services, including crisis centers and shelters; train police and healthcare providers to respond effectively to all reports of domestic violence;
• Implement in full the conclusions of the UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women from 2019.

People with Disabilities

38. At its last UPR, Kazakhstan supported multiple recommendations to ensure inclusive education for all children with disabilities, including by “allocating resources”[25] and providing “professional training for teachers.”[26]
39. In June 2021, Kazakhstan adopted a new, inclusive education law which removed multiple references to a problematic medical and educational exam as a prerequisite for enrolment in a mainstream school and introduced new provisions that make it a state responsibility to provide reasonable accommodations to children with disabilities.
40. In practice, many children with disabilities do not have access to inclusive education and remain isolated in segregated special schools or residential institutions, where they can face violence, neglect, physical restraint, and overmedication.
41. Kazakhstan has no national plan to close residential institutions for children with psychosocial disabilities. In August 2023, 14 children in a state residential institution in Karaganda were hospitalized with poisoning and two of the children died.[27] In May 2020, four children living in a residential institution in eastern Kazakhstan died and 16 others were hospitalized with measles and intestinal infections.
42. Proposed UPR recommendations for Kazakhstan:

• Guarantee that persons with disabilities, including children with disabilities living in institutions, can access quality inclusive education in the communities where they live, on an equal basis with others, including through the provision of reasonable accommodations;
• Reform the Psychological-Medical-Pedagogical Consultation to ensure its decision regarding a child’s educational path is not a prerequisite to enrollment in a mainstream school;
• Allocate sufficient resources to train educators and provide reasonable accommodations to all children with disabilities who wish to study in mainstream schools;
• For as long as children with disabilities live in institutions, ensure they have access to dignified and healthy conditions of living, adequate health care, and play;
• Develop a concrete action plan for deinstitutionalization of children and adults with disabilities.

Poverty and Inequality

43. At its last UPR, Kazakhstan said it had “expanded the eligibility for targeted social assistance and other benefits, increasing the average basic pension by over 70 per cent.”[28] Kazakhstan also adopted recommendations[29] to ratify the Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights, but has not yet done so.
44. Human Rights Watch found in 2022 that vulnerable populations in Kazakhstan are not able to secure their basic social and economic rights.[30]
45. Kazakhstan’s main social assistance program, Targeted Social Assistance (TSA), has rigid eligibility criteria, including residence registration, employment requirements, and a low-income threshold, which has meant that many people with low incomes, including single mothers and families with multiple children, are prevented from accessing social security. Low-income families also face stigma and discrimination when trying to access state benefits.
46. Proposed UPR recommendations for Kazakhstan:

• Review the TSA application process to streamline the procedure; remove or amend the residence registration requirement; and review the income calculation system;
• Move from narrowly means-tested social assistance to universal social security programs in line with ILO Social Security (Minimum Standards) Convention №102.
• Commit to introducing a universal child benefit in the form of a monthly allowance, which would lower child poverty without the exclusion errors common to poverty targeted benefit programs.
• Ratify the Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights.

Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity

47. Kazakhstan does not provide legal protection against discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity. At its last UPR, Kazakhstan noted recommendations[31] urging the prohibition of any form of discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity, saying “there is no need to strengthen the legal framework.”
48. The process for changing one’s legally recognized gender remains invasive and humiliating. In June 2023, the Committee Against Torture called on Kazakhstan to “revoke the requirement of mandatory reassignment surgery.”[32]
49. Proposed UPR recommendations for Kazakhstan:

• Publicly condemn abuses on the basis of people’s sexual orientation or gender identity and protect the personal security, privacy, and nondiscrimination of LGBT people in Kazakhstan;
• Introduce comprehensive anti-discrimination legislation that prohibits discrimination, including online, on the grounds of sex, gender, gender identity, and sexual orientation and includes effective measures to identify and address such discrimination.