Kafka in Kazakhstan, Daily Brief August 27, 2024

Imagine this. You just got out of prison. By the way, you didn’t do anything wrong to get there – you merely peacefully protested against the authorities – but they locked you up anyway. Now, you’re walking out the prison gates, finally free.

It’s time to get your life back in order. One of the first things you need to do is get some cash, so you hit an ATM. Your card doesn’t work. When you go into the bank to find out what the trouble is, they tell you your account’s been blocked. That’s how you learn you’re on the government’s “Financing Terrorism List.”

You thought you were finally free, but it turns out you’re not. Not really.

You can be in public, but you can’t interact with much of it. You are financially ostracized, cut out of the modern economy. You are forbidden from using credit cards and debit cards.

You are theoretically allowed to have a job, but what employer is going to want to hire someone on a government blacklist – especially since they would have to make special arrangements to pay you?

When you were sentenced – again, for the non-crime of peacefully protesting – there was nothing in the verdict about these restrictions. And when you try to find out more, you get the runaround. Sometimes, officials say they don’t even know what the list is about.

This is a Kafkaesque side to Kazakhstan: repression without rationality. The state bureaucracy punishes peaceful opposition activists, government critics, and others with unjustified, unclear, and unannounced restrictions. The politically targeted become economically isolated.

A core issue is that the law does not distinguish between violent and nonviolent extremism. So, authorities in Kazakhstan can misuse extremism and terrorism legislation to target peaceful dissenters and others. This is in violation of international human rights law.

Even people who have not participated in, instigated, or financed violence are automatically subject to the financial restrictions described here. This interferes with peoples’ economic and social rights.

The government needs to narrow its focus. It should change the law so that legislation related to extremism and terrorism is not misused, including against peaceful critics. It also needs to remove people convicted of nonviolent crimes from the list.

A few questions from Kazakhstan’s international partners could help here, too. The government of Kazakhstan cares about its global reputation, and Kafkaesque nightmares are not a good look.