H. E. Nursultan Nazarbayev
President of the Republic of Kazakhstan
Office of the President
11 Mira Street
473000 Astana
Kazakhstan
Fax: +7 3172 326 182
Vienna, 10 May 2005
Your Excellency,
The International Press Institute (IPI), the global network of editors, media executives and leading journalists in over 120 countries, is deeply concerned about the closure of the independent opposition weekly Respublika.
According to information before IPI, on 4 May, the appeals court upheld the 25 March decision of the Almaty regional court, which ordered the liquidation of Respublika’s owner, the Bastau company. Subsequently, on 5 May, Kazakhstan’s Ministry of Information, Culture and Sport ordered the closure of the popular opposition weekly, in defiance of the company’s right to appeal within ten days against the court’s decision.
The ruling stems from a 20 January reprint of an interview with Vladimir Zhirinovsky, leader of the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia (LDPR), in which he criticised Kazakhstan’s policies towards Russia. The interview was published in an article in Respublika Delovoe Obozrenie and the authorities charged the paper with “violating the integrity of the Republic of Kazakhstan.”
Respublika’s deputy editor, Galina Dyrdina, said the paper would appeal the order. Dyrdina believes the decision to close the paper is politically motivated.
The weekly, founded in 2000, has been a staunch critic of the Kazakh government. Respublika has often been subject to repressive court decisions and closure by the authorities; its journalists were frequently harassed. Due to the harassment, the paper was also published under the name Assandi Times for several years.
Respublika’s editor-in-chief, Irina Petrushova, has been living in self-imposed exile in Russia since 2002, when she fled from Kazakhstan because of threats against her life and her newspaper. In April, Petrushova was detained in Volokolamsk, Russia, at the request of the Kazakh authorities. She was detained for two days. Petrushova was also detained and questioned for several hours in St. Petersburg in March 2004.
The closure of Respublika appears to be part of a campaign to harass the media ahead of the presidential elections and comes shortly after legislation outlawing public protests at election time.
IPI would remind the Kazakh authorities that newspapers play an essential role in disseminating information and scrutinising the work of governments. Your Excellency’s government has a moral, legal, and ethical obligation to ensure the democratic progress of your country, and we urge you to respect the key role played by a free and independent press in this process.
We thank you for your attention.
Yours sincerely,
Johann P. Fritz
Director
