His Excellency Nursultan Nazarbayev
President
Office of the President
Mira 11
473000 Astana
Kazakhstan
Vienna, 11 November 2002
Your Excellency,
The International Press Institute (IPI), the global network of editors, media executives and leading journalists, strongly condemns the detention of Sergei Duvanov, editor of the Bulletin of the International Bureau for Human Rights and Rule of Law, who is currently on hunger strike.
According to IPI’s sources, Duvanov was arrested on 28 October 2002 just before he was due to leave the country for Washington, DC, where he was to deliver a report on democracy and human rights in Kazakhstan. He was formally charged with having raped a 14-year-old girl on 7 November.
In protest at his arrest and the fabrication of evidence against him, Duvanov embarked on a hunger strike on 31 October, demanding that the current team of investigators be replaced. We are informed that he is reportedly being force-fed intravenously by the authorities. Duvanov swears that he is innocent and that he is ready to die in order to defend his honour. He claims he was framed by the government in retribution for his work criticising corrupt administration practices.
Two months prior to his arrest, Duvanov was beaten unconscious by unknown assailants outside his residence in Alma Ata. Previously, he had been detained by the Interior Affairs Ministry for “dishonouring the President” through his writing. In August, Duvanov had posted an Internet article, entitled “The Silence of the Lambs”, in which he implicated the president in the disappearance of millions of dollars of income from oil transactions. If convicted of raping the underage girl, Duvanov faces 10 years in prison.
In the last few years, the independent media has been virtually silenced in Kazakhstan and almost all prominent journalists have faced harassment, physical assaults, criminal proceedings, and confiscation of property and writing materials. IPI understands that a fax was sent by the authorities to the news media of the country, providing them with instructions on how to portray the Duvanov case prior to the journalist’s arrest.
IPI regards the incarceration of journalists as a gross violation of everyone’s right to “seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers” as guaranteed by Article 19 of the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights, to which Kazakhstan is a signatory.
Furthermore, IPI would remind Your Excellency that a defendant is innocent until proven guilty and, on this basis, we would invite the Government of Kazakhstan, to release Duvanov on bail so that he might devote his time to a defence. We would also call upon the authorities to carry out a full and proper investigation, in accordance with international norms, to determine whether Duvanov has a case to answer.
We further urge you to do everything in your power to ensure that the independent Kazakh media be allowed to resume publishing unhindered by any kind of violence or intimidation and that Kazakhstan’s journalists be allowed to carry out their profession without further harassment.
We thank you for your attention.
Yours sincerely,
Johann P. Fritz
Director
