Manshuk Asautai is a correspondent for RFE/RL's Kazakh Service.
After Kazakh activists convicted of violating vague "extremism" laws are released from jail, they often find it impossible to live normal lives. Their struggles to find work and access basic services are due to being on a "financing extremism" list. Rights watchdog Human Rights Watch has called on the government to lift these "arbitrary" restrictions.
The story of a schoolgirl in the southern city of Qyzylorda being sold into prostitution for months by her classmates has stunned Kazakhs. Police have arrested four minors, but activists say the problem goes far deeper than that.
Dozens came on May 31 to the memorial of Stalinist repressions, built on the site of a mass grave in the village of Zhanalyq, near the Kazakh city of Almaty. Mourners brought portraits of ancestors executed or disappeared under Josef Stalin's rule. Some said that political violence is not over yet.
Independent Kazakh journalist Duman Mukhammedkarim, on trial for what he says are politically motivated charges, has launched another hunger strike to protest against the delay of an investigation into his complaint that he was tortured in custody.
A military court in Kazakhstan’s largest city, Almaty, has acquitted the defendant in a high-profile trial related to the death of a 4-year-old child during unrest in Kazakhstan in January last year that claimed at least 238 lives.
A Kazakh court has delivered a suspended sentence to Nazym Tabyldieva for her online posts slamming President Qasym-Zhomart Toqaev and three regional prosecutors. Tabyldieva's supporters waiting outside the court were relieved because the prosecutor had demanded imprisonment.
President Qasym-Zhomart Toqaev has called torture incidents “barbaric medieval happenings” that “contradict the principles of any progressive society.” But evidence suggests that the practice is systemic.
The mother of a murdered 5-year-old girl broke down in a court in Kazakhstan on September 7 after a judge ruled that a suspect from the country's Turkestan region was guilty of her murder. Saidolim Gaibnazarov was sentenced to life in prison for sexually assaulting and killing the child.
Noted Kazakh dissident Ermek Narymbaev (aka Narymbai) has been released from prison two days after he was supposed to be set free.
The high-profile trial of a suspect allegedly involved in the killing of a 4-year-old child during unrest in Kazakhstan last year that claimed at least 238 lives has started in the Central Asian nation's largest city, Almaty.
A court in the Kazakh city of Taraz convicted five dead men on February 7 for their alleged roles in nationwide anti-government protests in January 2022, during which at least 238 people died. Four living men were also found guilty. Relatives of the deceased spoke to RFE/RL.
Kazakh authorities have closed and classified a high-profile case over the killing of a four-year-old child during unrest a year ago that claimed at least 238 lives across the country.
Police in Kazakhstan's largest city, Almaty, have detained opposition activists who planned to hold a rally to challenge next month's early presidential election.
Another Kazakh activist has been released from prison after a court replaced the remainder of his five-year sentence with a parole-like penalty amid an outcry by human rights groups over political prisoners in the Central Asian nation.
A Kazakh court has replaced another activist's prison sentence with a parole-like penalty, the latest in a series of similar moves in President Qasym-Zhomart Toqaev's self-proclaimed liberalization campaign amid an outcry by human rights groups over political prisoners.
Kazakh authorities have rejected a request by the family of Zamanbek Nurqadilov to launch a new probe into the 2005 death of the opposition leader, which was ruled a suicide even though the government critic was found shot three times.
A Kazakh women's prison inmate accuses a guard of raping her. Instead of taking action against the guard, prison officials are preparing to send the inmate to a psychiatric hospital. Lawyers say the authorities do not want to admit rape exists in Kazakh prisons and are silencing those who speak out.
Dissident Kazakh poet Aron Atabek, who was recently released from prison after spending 15 years behind bars on charges he denied, has been hospitalized and is currently in an intensive care unit.
Police in Kazakhstan’s largest city, Almaty, have detained several activists who have been involved in ongoing pickets in front of the Chinese Consulate to demand the release of their relatives held in China's Xinjiang-Uighur Autonomous Region.
State workers complain that Kazakhstan's relative wealth isn't trickling down, prompting some to turn to the marketplace -- or simply turn their office into one.
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