Kazakhstan has passed amendments to its media law that will impose new restrictions on the media and make aspects such as registration more difficult and problematic. In the weeks before the passage there were pleas from groups including Article 19 asking the president to veto them and a demonstration involving hundreds of activists and journalists in Almaty on 24 June demanding the bills repeal. The Senate ignored these cries of international concern and local outrage and passed the amendments to the Mass Media Law, the Tax Code and the Code of Administrative Offences on 29 June. The president followed, signing them into law on 5 July.
Matthew Graham reports for ARTICLE 19.

 According to an Article 19 report from 4 July, Kazakhstan already operates an “unnecessarily harsh regulatory regime for the media”. They argue that this, along with the new laws, is especially problematic due to Kazakhstan’s membership in OSCE and the United nations, as a signatory of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and as a candidate for the 2009 OSCE chairmanship. All of these bodies contain freedom of press stipulations that could be considered contrary to Kazakhstan’s current treatment of and stance on press freedom.
The new law will institute further hurdles for journalists, including:

– Unnecessarily difficult and complex registration procedures for minor
changes, such as changes in address or thematic focus
– Harsh penalties for printing or broadcasting without registering
– or re-registering
– A tax for those wishing to register or re-register
– More instances in which a license may be withheld or revoked, including a publication’s content
– Restrictions on the amount of print or airtime in which languages other than Kazakh the state language, may be used
– Increased fees to excessive amounts for minor administrative matters
– Barring of an editor-in-chief from holding the same position at another publication if one he had worked for previously was closed down.

2004 law “was no more than sleight of hand”
 Media outlets afforded a great deal of attention after a similar bill was passed by Parliament in 2004, and some considered it a victory when President Nursultan Nazarbaev vetoed those amendments. Others considered the entire process a ploy to gain praise from local and international media and human rights groups and governments. Sergey Duvanov, an opposition journalist based in Almaty, said:

“Kazak president Nursultan Nazarbaev´s recent decision to block a controversial media law will do nothing for freedom of speech, and is merely an attempt to score political points at home and abroad.
In a country like Kazakhstan, it does not ultimately matter what bills are adopted or rejected, as there is no rule of law anyway. The authorities have the capacity to punish the media without resorting to legal mechanisms.”

Journalists in the country already face plenty of judicial and extra-judicial repressive tactics from the government. One journalist, Zhasaral Kuanyshalin, is facing a prison term for insulting the president; the newspaper Aina Plus may go bankrupt due to police charges; and on 27 April Kenzhegali Aitbakiyev of Aina Plus was beaten by 10 men, probably for his reporting on the “Kazakhgate” scandal, which alleges that the president embezzled oil revenues.

Similar law struck down in 2004
 The harsher media law of 2004 was vetoed by President Nazarbaev. It would have established an “authorised body on mass media affairs” which would have monitored the media in general and maintained the power to shut down individual outlets and silence journalists who offended or insulted the government or any individual. It also would have instituted new registration procedures, limited the viability of printing opinion pieces, and placed limits on the amount of foreign media outlets in the country as well as set up regulations pertaining to the use of languages other than Kazakh, the state language, to which Russian is generally preferred.

History of Kazakh media
 The country’s first media law was passed in 1991 after the country gained independence. A new one was passed on 23 July 1999 to replace the 1991 law, and that law was amended in 2001 to place online media under the same restrictions as traditional media, with the exception of registration procedures.
 The Kazak Constitution also sets some freedom of speech and freedom of the press guidelines, including a guarantee of both without censorship, and the right to receive and distribute information, except in a manner “prohibited by law”. The 2001 version of the Mass Media law stipulates that “if an international treaty sets other rules than contained in the present law, then the rules of international treaty are used”. The UN, OSCE and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights all contain rules that, according to these reports, Kazakhstan ignores.