Media reports say Kazakh diplomat has been recalled from UAE after wife accused him of a decade of domestic abuse.
Kazakh human rights organization NeMolchi.kz says the wife of a Kazakh diplomat stationed in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) on May 6 accused her husband of a decade of violent abuse.
According to Karina Mamash, who released a video in which her visibly beaten face can be seen on multiple occasions, her husband Saken Mamash, a Counselor at Kazakhstan’s Embassy in the UAE, has regularly beaten her for over 10 years, and on Sunday even used force on her sister. Mamash said that she feared for herself and her children, all of whom she described as being “in danger around him”.
“I have been subjected to violence for 10 years. I want my husband to be stripped of his diplomatic status and put in jail for all the abuse he has subjected me to,” she said, adding that the abuse had run the gauntlet from physical and sexual to psychological and economic abuse.
Citing the Kazakh Foreign Ministry, Kazakhstan’s independent media outlet Orda.kz says the diplomat has been recalled to Astana and “his case will now be dealt with by law enforcement agencies.”
In April, Kazakhstan passed a law criminalizing domestic violence for the first time, as the country watched the high-profile trial of Kazakhstan’s former National Economy Minister, Quandyq Bishimbayev, who was accused of brutally murdering his wife.
According to the country’s Prosecutor General’s Office, an average of 300 women go to the police in Kazakhstan daily after being beaten by their husbands, and in 2023, some 69 women died at the hands of their spouses.
