ALMATY, Kazakhstan — On the floor, it would look like Kazakh officers are responding busily to probably the most high-profile incident of spousal homicide within the nation’s historical past.
Within the capital, Astana, lawmakers insisted this week that they’re working to strengthen punishment for home violence.
Within the largest metropolis, Almaty, authorities took the uncommon step of allowing a rally towards violence towards ladies on the finish of November, held after former Economic system Minister Quandyq Bishimbaev was jailed on suspicion of killing his 31-year-old spouse, Saltanat Nukenova.
Look just a little deeper, nonetheless, and there are troubling questions on what officers within the authorities of President Qasym-Zhomart Toqaev appear to need to take from this tragic occasion.
Why, for example, after one group of organizers was permitted to carry an illustration on the subject, was one other denied the identical privilege?
And why, at a time of elevated public debate round violence towards ladies, is likely one of the civic teams that has completed probably the most to attract consideration to those crimes discovering itself underneath monetary sanctions and an investigation?
A Reasonably Unusual Rally
Since it’s uncommon for officers in Kazakhstan to allow demonstrations of any sort, it is smart to start with the protest held in Almaty on November 26.
Headlined ”Say no to the animal world,” the rally was weird for causes apart from its branding.
Interviews by RFE/RL’s Kazakh Service with demonstrators who had been keen to speak — many refused — revealed that the majority had traveled greater than 1,000 kilometers from Astana to protest in Almaty.
Furthermore, many contributors appeared unable to articulate their calls for past a rejection of what they known as animal-like violence, a trait represented by posters depicting half-man, half-beast figures, and animal masks placed on mannequins in a cage.
Alikhan Sarsenov, a member of the Zhana Adamdar (New Faces) group that organized the rally, informed RFE/RL the demonstrators did not ”see the purpose” of stricter laws on home violence and had been as a substitute seeking to promote behavioral change.
”Folks’s considering is not going to change if the [punishment] is altered by 5 or 10 years. We have to change our personal considering so that folks perceive [that violence is wrong],” he stated.
This reasonable place — and the actual fact the rally was allowed — turns into extra comprehensible within the context of Zhana Adamdar being an ardently pro-Toqaev group whose members have beforehand met with the president.
After information broke that this group had been granted permission to reveal, impartial feminist teams quickly complained that spin docs in Toqaev’s administration had been attempting to take management of an emotive public dialog about gender-based violence.
Zhanar Adamdar didn’t conceal its admiration for Toqaev on the occasion. ”In the present day, we got here to this sq. to say no to the animal world. The president says our nation should stay by guidelines and legal guidelines,” stated Sarsenov colleague Asel Badenova in a speech on the occasion.
Silencing ’Do not Be Silent’
On the identical time, two feminists who tried to achieve entry to the demonstration had been turned again by police for carrying placards demanding the tip of an ongoing investigation focusing on NeMolchi.kz, a nonprofit well-known for its assist for victims of sexual violence.
NeMolchi.kz (Do not Be Silent) just lately misplaced entry to its native financial institution accounts and, though police have failed to supply the group with any particulars of the case, the group’s head, Dina Smailova, believes she is being falsely accused of embezzling cash that was crowdsourced as a part of the charity’s work.
Because it turned out, the issues dealing with NeMolchi.kz had been raised by one other participant on the rally, and one which organizers may hardly shut down.
Aitbek Amangeldy, Nukenova’s brother, spoke emotionally about his 31-year-old sister, who was overwhelmed to demise in a personal room at an expensive Astana restaurant owned by the Bishimbaev household previous to Bishimbaev’s arrest.
And he used the event to excoriate the authorities for failing to move legal guidelines to guard ladies and for losing time harassing a fund that does a lot to assist the weak.
”With out this fund, 1000’s of ladies can be left with out assist,” Amangeldy stated of NeMolchi.kz, with out naming it. ”I hope that in a yr, once I come to Saltanat’s grave, I can inform her that we now have modified one thing, that we have gotten higher, kinder, and, most significantly, extra empathetic towards one another,” he stated.
Zhana Adamdar has stated it’s going to proceed to carry public occasions towards gender-based violence.
However the impartial feminist group Feminita stated on December 4 that it had been denied the identical privilege, after its purposes to carry rallies on two squares designated for demonstrations on December 9 had been rejected by the identical Almaty authorities that gave Zhana Adamdar the inexperienced gentle.
Almaty’s municipality informed the group that one of many squares was present process repairs, whereas the opposite had already been booked by different organizers for ”mass cultural actions,” Feminita stated in a press release on social media.
It is The Cops, Silly
Regardless of a whole lot of ladies dying from abuse yearly, home violence just isn’t absolutely criminalized in Kazakhstan. The indignant public response to Nukenova’s demise, nonetheless, has made that scenario appear untenable going ahead.
The speaker of Kazakhstan’s decrease home, Erlan Qoshanov, stated on December 5 that lawmakers had been contemplating amendments to the Legal Code that might take away noncustodial sentences as choices on convictions for inflicting reasonable and critical hurt on an individual — two crimes carefully related to home violence.
Kazakhstan had already made progress in combating home violence earlier this yr, Qoshanov stated, after complaints filed by third events — slightly than simply victims of abuse — and video proof grew to become potential pretexts to arrest abusers.
However that is skirting round the primary downside, as Qoshanov is aware of properly.
Underneath present legal guidelines, even with this kind of proof, a settlement between abused and abuser can nonetheless kill a case and go away a sufferer weak to additional violence. And as ladies’s rights teams are uninterested in mentioning, police are sometimes very happy to facilitate such reconciliations — typically in alternate for cash from the perpetrators of the violence.
This and different key issues within the course of might need been partially solved by a regulation on the prevention of home violence that made it to parliament in 2020 however by no means bought past a primary studying.
Margarita Uskembaeva, an writer of the regulation, famous at a current press convention in Almaty that the draft laws clearly outlined the obligations of police in relation to home abuse circumstances, in addition to the obligations of the Well being, Labor, and Training ministries, the place applicable.
However ”the regulation was shelved because of a wave of hate that turned out to be stronger than [the views of] progressive specialists,” Uskembaeva stated on the November 22 occasion. ”Those self same regulation enforcement companies don’t need [laws] to struggle [domestic violence] to work.”
Current circumstances have highlighted how law enforcement officials will also be lively contributors in violence towards ladies.
Smailova of NeMolchi.kz grew to become conscious of the case towards her simply days after her November 16 Fb put up highlighting a hitherto unpublicized incident through which two police officers within the province of Konaev allegedly raped a 14-year-old woman.
Smailova stated that she had heard that the policemen had been faraway from their positions however that their bosses had been attempting to keep away from the case changing into information. She publicly demanded extra details about the case.
Any backlash would solely be logical. The weeks earlier than the put up had been unhealthy sufficient for the status of Kazakh police.
A video of a policeman attempting to power a rape sufferer into withdrawing a press release had gone viral, producing disgust, whereas a police chief within the city of Taldyqorghon had just lately been detained on suspicion of raping a girl.
The obvious case towards Smailova can be the third within the historical past of NeMolchi.kz.
The activist and her lawyer declare that police have been harassing residents that donate to the group in several elements of the nation in an try to get them to put in writing statements towards her.
RFE/RL correspondents made quite a few telephone calls to police in Japanese Kazakhstan Province, the place the case was reportedly opened, so as to attempt to discover out extra about it however bought brief shrift.
One policeman that answered the phone informed a correspondent he had ”no proper to disclose the secrets and techniques of the investigation.”
”So I will not disclose, and you will not hassle me,” the policeman stated, earlier than hanging up.