Human Rights Watch (HRW) urged Kazakhstan’s authorities on Thursday to guarantee a fair appeal for an investigative journalist sentenced to prison for spreading false information. The rights group also called on the country to revise its laws concerning speech offenses to align them with international standards for freedom of expression.
HRW considered the reporter’s imprisonment sentence disproportionate to the crime allegedly committed. The rights group also criticized Kazakhstan’s national laws for criminalizing reputational speech offenses and deemed them “incompatible with respect of freedom of expression.” HRW explained that civil defamation laws are adequate for addressing the reputational harm caused by the spread of false information and are more respectful of freedom of expression. Therefore, it urged the country to eliminate criminal sanctions for reputational speech crimes and align its laws with international human rights standards.
Moreover, HRW highlighted that custodial sentences for journalists could hinder freedom of expression in Kazakhstan. Therefore, it called on the country’s international partners to pressure it to adopt legislation that promotes free speech. The senior Central Asia researcher at HRW said, “Imprisonment is never an appropriate sentence for speech offences and will have a chilling effect on independent journalism in Kazakhstan”.
HRW’s statement concerns the case of a Kazakh investigative journalist named Daniyar Adilbekov. The latter was sentenced to four years and a half in prison for disseminating false information through a Telegram post in which he accused the country’s Vice Minister of Energy of corruption. In response to his imprisonment, a group of journalists signed a petition calling for his release and referred to the imprisonment sentence as a “disproportionate punishment” for a crime that doesn’t pose a public danger.
This isn’t the first time HRW has implored Kazakhstan to respect citizens’ right to a fair trial and due process. Earlier this year, the rights group raised concerns about the truthfulness of the charges against a women’s rights activist.
Freedom of expression is the ability to express one’s opinions and ideas without restraint, censorship, or legal penalty. This right also includes the freedom to receive and access information without interference and regardless of frontiers. This right implies that journalists can freely comment on public issues and inform public opinion without censorship or restraint. Article 20 of Kazakhstan’s constitution guarantees the right to freedom of expression. Additionally, this fundamental right is protected under Article 19 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), which states that it may be subject to some restrictions, provided those restrictions are established by law and necessary to protect a legitimate interest.
One common restriction governments use to limit press freedom is defamation as defined in Article 17 of the ICCPR. However, the United Nations (UN) general comment N°34 on Article 19 of the Covenant stresses that States parties should craft their national defamation laws carefully and even recommends the decriminalization of defamation, noting that imprisonment for such offenses “is never an appropriate penalty”.
