Human rights defenders in Kazakstan are concerned at the arrest of journalist Alexander Kharlamov, who stands accused of inciting religious strife on the grounds of his forthright atheist views.

National Human Rights Action Plan by Kazakhstan for 2009-2012 has finished. According to Kazakhstani human rights defending NGO it has been implemented in total no more than 22%. This review represents a brief general review, containing a detailed evaluation of human rights and liberties for every single chapter of the National Plan, the evaluation of how well the National Plan has been implemented, the state-of-art analysis and recommendations.

World Justice Project released its Rule of Law Index 2012-2013 report covering 97 countries and jurisdictions, representing over 90 percent of the world’s population. In the Index Kazakhstan is recognized as a country where no respect to law and is situated on the 74th place out of 97.

Civic Solidarity Platform members regret that the EU High Representative during her visit to Central Asia did not publicly engage on human rights with respective Central Asian governments. As the EU is about to receive the Nobel Peace Price for its ‘advancement of peace and reconciliation, democracy and human rights’ such an omission is inexcusable. 

In August 2012 a team of four observers from SIHRG attended the trial of Vladimir Kozlov, Seryck Sapargali and Akzhanat Aminov. In the opinion of the observers the verdicts of guilty against Kozlov were not justified by either the evidence presented to the Court or the reasoning in the final Judgment.

With support of international NGO partners, more than a dozen human rights NGOs from Central Asia have signed a Memorandum of Understanding. The Memorandum is based on the recognition that human rights organizations from across this region can significantly benefit from coordination, cooperation and mutual solidarity.

Religious freedom conditions in Kazakhstan deteriorated in 2012. The Kazakh government in late 2011 adopted a repressive new religion law that resulted in a sharp drop in the number of registered religious groups in 2012. Unregistered religious activity is illegal, and the activities of registered groups are strictly regulated. Based on these concerns, USCIRF places Kazakhstan on Tier 2 for the first time in 2013. The Commission has reported on Kazakhstan in its Annual Reports since 2008.

The most significant human rights problems were severe limits on citizens’ rights to change their government; restrictions on freedom of speech, press, assembly, religion, and association; and lack of an independent judiciary and due process, especially in dealing with pervasive corruption and law enforcement and judicial abuse.

In a resolution adopted by a large majority, the European Parliament strongly criticised the court decision to ban opposition parties, including the unregistered ‘Alga!’ party, as well as independent media actors.