Kazakhstan: Rights Activist Released from Prison amid Crackdown

    By Eurasianet
    Astana might be expecting complimentary headlines for releasing a jailed critic, but rights watchdogs are using the amnesty of Yevgeniy Zhovtis to highlight the country’s recent silencing of opposition voices.
    Zhovtis, director of the Kazakhstan International Bureau on Human Rights and the Rule of Law, was sentenced to four years in September 2009 for vehicular manslaughter following a two-day trial that was widely criticized for procedural violations. At the time, Zhovtis, who acknowledges that his car hit and killed a man on a dark road, but who insists he was not criminally responsible, denounced the trail as a “political setup” designed to silence his human rights campaigning.
    He was released in an amnesty on February 17 and said he would continue campaigning for human rights in Kazakhstan.
    The timing of the original amnesty announcement, made on February 1, prompted many observers to conclude it was designed as a peace offering that Foreign Minister Yerzhan Kazykhanov could make when he met US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton that day in Washington.
    In late January, Vladimir Kozlov, leader of the unregistered Alga! opposition party, and Igor Vinyavskiy, editor of the Vzglyad newspaper, were arrested during raids. Other critics of President Nursultan Nazarbayev’s administration have been detained, notably organizers of an unsanctioned protest rally in Almaty on January 28, who received 15-day sentences. Authorities suspect Kozlov of organizing a workers’ strike in and around the western oil town of Zhanaozen that exploded into violence in mid-December, leaving at least 17 dead.
    The chair of the OSCE's Parliamentary Assembly human rights committee has called them “political prisoners.”
    “Unfortunately, as Zhovtis comes out of prison too many other people remain in prison in Kazakhstan for simply trying to exercise their freedom of assembly or expression. I call on Kazakhstan to respect its OSCE commitments to these and other freedoms and release political prisoners like Igor Vinyavsky and Vladimir Kozlov,” chair Matteo Mecacci said when the amnesty was announced.
    While welcoming the release of “the most authoritative voice on human rights issues in Kazakhstan,” the Open Society Justice Initiative said Zhovtis is “still awaiting justice.”
    “Kazakhstan must now acknowledge that his imprisonment was the result of a politically-motivated unfair trial and arbitrary excessive sentencing,” said the organization in a statement.