A group of six leading international human rights organizations and press freedom associations has appealed to the President of Kazakhstan, Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, urging him to intervene in the situation with the increasing pressure on independent media in the country.
In a joint statement, the Committee to Protect Journalists, the Norwegian Helsinki Committee, the International Partnership for Human Rights (IPHR), Civil Rights Defenders, the International Press Institute (IPI), and Freedom For Eurasia (FFE) emphasize that the wave of arrests that began in December 2025 directly contradicts the concept of the president’s proclaimed reform program “New Kazakhstan” and the principles of the rule of law.
Human rights defenders are particularly alarmed by the use of Article 274 of the Criminal Code on the dissemination of knowingly false information. Due to its excessively broad wording, this provision has become a tool of pressure, allowing journalists to be imprisoned for up to three years. Currently, several notable figures in the Kazakh media sphere are under house arrest under this article.
One of the first to face persecution was the founder of the publication Orda.kz, Gulnara Bazhkenova. Since December 2025, she has been awaiting trial in connection with statements about government corruption made in a YouTube broadcast. Human rights defenders point out that the arrest was preceded by an unprecedented harassment campaign: funeral wreaths were sent to the journalist, and deepfake videos with false messages about her suicide were spread online. The situation worsened when Bazhkenova’s lawyer, who was actively defending her interests, was stripped of his license.
The editorial team of the KazTAG agency is experiencing similar pressure. Editor-in-chief Amir Kasenov is under house arrest following a complaint by the company Freedom Finance, which considered the publication’s articles as an “information campaign” against its shareholder. Simultaneously, KazTAG’s director, Aset Matayev, suffered a brutal attack involving a crowbar, after which he himself was arrested on charges of hooliganism. Despite the earlier charges of spreading falsehoods against him being dropped, the international community is demanding a transparent investigation of the incident, seeing it as connected to his professional activities.
The list of those persecuted also includes independent journalist Botagoz Omarova, whose arrest in March 2026 is linked to a publication about financial violations in the construction of facilities for the President’s Administration. Lukpan Akhmedyarov, the founder of the “Prosto Zhurnalistika” project, also remains under threat of criminal prosecution.
International organizations note that the repressions have gone beyond individual cases and have taken on a systemic nature. This is manifested in mass denials of accreditation to journalists from “Radio Azattyk,” the blocking of the ResPublika portal, and the closure of the popular Airan project, whose sponsors faced pressure. The combination of these factors – from cyberattacks to coordinated complaints on social media – creates an atmosphere of fear and enforced self-censorship in the country.
The authors of the appeal urged President Tokayev to initiate the complete decriminalization of the article on false information, release the persecuted journalists, and hold a personal meeting to discuss ways out of the freedom of speech crisis. According to human rights defenders, the absence of decisive measures to protect the press could undermine the authority of the “New Kazakhstan” reform program.
“These attacks on the press threaten to create an atmosphere of fear and self-censorship, which will cause irreparable damage to the authority of your reform program. We are convinced that the criminalization and exemplary punishment of journalists, as mentioned above, have no place in the democratic society you strive to build within the framework of ‘New Kazakhstan,'” concluded the authors of the letter.
