Human Rights in Kazakhstan, issue 16 (excerpts)

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Date: Fri, 20 Oct 2000 16:55:09 +0200 (EET)
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Subject: Human Rights in Kazakhstan, issue 16 (excerpts)

From: MINELRES moderator <[email protected]>

Original sender: Marat Khassanov <[email protected]>

Human Rights in Kazakhstan, issue 15 (content)


INFORMATION NEWSLETTER 
OF KAZAKHSTAN INTERNATIONAL BUREAU FOR HUMAN RIGHTS AND RULE OF LAW

"HUMAN RIGHTS IN KAZAKHSTAN AND ALL OVER THE WORLD"
N 16 (September 16-30, 2000)


CONTENTS

Kazakhstan:

* Attack on the editor of the "Republica-2000" newspaper
* Well-known opposition activist is made to testify against himself
* By authority given to me by the Republic of  Kazakhstan �
* Authorities threaten distributors of opposition newspapers 
* Holiday for oralmans
* "SolDat" newspaper became clandestine
* Internet censorship - access to Eurasia web-site is blocked again
* Cruel charity

.............

HOLIDAY FOR ORALMANS
"KODA" Information Agency

Akimat (mayor's office) of Almaty declared the 21 of September to be
the Day of Oralmans. Almaty is home to more then 1,5 thousands of
Kazakh repatriates from other countries and majority of them are
teachers, artists, poets and writers. There are 480 oralman families
registered in Almaty and only 136 of them have been offered
apartments. 

Repatriates face many problems - there is a difficulty to receive
citizenship, to find employment and schools for their children.
Recently government allowed ethnic Kazakhs who wish to resettle in
Kazakhstan to bring their cattle with them. For the last nine years
more than 200,000 of ethnic Kazakhs returned to Kazakhstan. However,
almost 4 million of Kazakh people live out of Kazakhstan with largest
Diaspora of 1,5 million living in China.

.............

INTERNET CENSORSHIP - ACCESS TO EURASIA WEB-SITE IS BLOCKED AGAIN

Internews.kz

Starting from September 15 users of two communication lines owned by
state companies "Kazakhtelekom" and "Nursat" have no access to the
popular opposition web-site Eurasia (http://www.eurasia.org.ru). 

The two companies are the major Internet providers in Kazakhstan with
majority of Internet users in the Republic being their clients.
Representatives of the company say that problems with Eurasia site are
purely technical and all the responsibility lies with webmasters.
However, users of private Internet providers do not experience any
difficulties with access to Eurasia web-site. 

There are reasons to believe that Kazakh authorities purposefully
blocked the site that publishes articles critical of state policies,
revealing facts of corruption and attempting to provide critical
outlook at the domestic and foreign policy of the country. Experts say
that technically such blockade of majority of web-sites is quite easy. 

Eurasia site has already been blocked in November last year. However
after international community protested against the violation of
principle of free access to information Kazakh authorities had to
remove the restriction. 

At this point, there was no official commentary issued. Internet
providers did not even thought it necessary to apologize for
restriction of rights of their clients and poor service. Looks like,
those invisible Internet censors hope that this time they can get away
with it. 

.............

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