Voice of Democracy
Published by Kazakhstan 21st Century Foundation · Washington, D.C. · Nov. 15, 2004

'PRESS FREEDOM REMAINS POOR' -- Government spokesmen and propagandists are working overtime to make people think they know what is going on in Kazakhstan, but the reality is real news is tightly controlled by an autocratic regime. "We simply don't know a lot about what is happening there," according to Soria Blatmann, a top official of Reporters Without Borders (RSF). "The situation is very bad." The international watchdog group has issued a new report declaring freedom of the press remains poor in Kazakhstan and other central Asian countries. RSF's third annual index of press freedom measures conditions in 167 countries. The 10 worst countries are Iran, Saudi Arabia, Nepal, Vietnam, China, Turkmenistan, Burma and North Korea. Kazakhstan ranks an abysmal 131. Journalists in Kazakhstan are persecuted on a regular basis, with no guarantee of freedom of information or the safety of journalists, reports www.alertnet.org. The Nazarbayev regime "is able to find a means to imprison those who oppose them," said Blatmann. http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/IRIN/1779befb8999dff6f95513502c5dd0b7.htm

A GLOWING WARNING -- Despite considerable health and safety risks, Kazakhstan is moving radioactive waste from the Baykonur space center to a former Soviet nuclear test site in the northern Kazakh city of Semipalatinsk, reports the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. Kazakh government officials deny the material will "expose any threat to environment or people's health," but environmental groups challenged that, IRIN reported. The Kazakh environmental NGO, Ecocentre, said the transfer is aggravated by the fact that there are also many radioactive sources around the country and unattended radioactive substances in Kazakhstan that can easily be accessed by people, according to IRIN. Ecocentre is concerned that Kazakh officials don't protect he material as well as they should, citing an incident when some local people removed the protective lead layer of some containers of radioactive material to smelt it and sell to scrap metal dealers, exposing themselves and untold others to radioactivity. http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/IRIN/17ba60b08222505f401ea7f450082e84.htm

KAZAKH CORRUPTION 'ENDEMIC' -- The leading threat to economic and political development in Central Asia is endemic corruption that plagues the region, declares a report by Transparency International (TI), a leading non-governmental organization combating corruption worldwide. "Both grand corruption and petty corruption represent severe problems in Central Asia," said TI's Miklos Marschall. Corruption at the highest levels of the Kazakh government are the focus of criminal proceedings in U.S. federal courts that have specifically named President Nursultan Nazarbayev. "What makes things worse is that the trend is downward," Marschall noted. TI's Global Corruption Perceptions Index for 2004 evaluates 146 countries; Finland and New Zealand were listed as the least corrupt and all five Central Asian republics were in the 30 most corrupt. On a scale of one to 10, Kazakhstan scored only 2.2. Sergey Zlotnikov, executive director of the anti-corruption group Transparency Kazakhstan (TK), said, "Corruption, of course, impacts on poverty. The rich become richer and the poor become poorer, and the gap between them becomes even greater." In oil-rich Kazakhstan, the problem is systemic and spreading, fed by a corrupt judicial system. "Kazakhstan is among the countries that have rich raw material resources and some unfair investors get contracts for oil and other raw material production through bribing [officials]. There is a lack of transparency in the extractive industry. All of this complicates the issue," Zlotnikov explained. http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/IRIN/c9a59826d24f30f3c6a7f5a4cf6b9ca9.htm

For the full stories, see the web citations above or contact us at News@Kazakhstan21.org or see VOD Archives http://iicas.org/english/enlibrary/libr_16_03_01kp.htm]. The Kazakhstan 21st Century Foundation promotes democracy and human rights in Kazakhstan through public affairs and educational programs in the United States and Europe. This material is distributed by Kazakhstan 21st Century Foundation.