Kazakhstan: More than just a Movie Gag
by Vivekananda Nemana

Know anything about Kazakhstan?

Probably, if you've seen (or heard of) Borat: Cultural Learnings of American for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan, which showcased the American escapades of Da Ali G Show's Borat, a fictitious, sexist, homophobic and anti-Semitic Kazakh journalist. The entire mockumentary, in which Borat repeatedly expresses to real, unsuspecting Americans how backwards his home country is, is a satire that points out how little Americans know about the rest of the world. Americans believe him, even though he makes everything up. For my generation, it was the first time Kazakhstan really had a presence in the mainstream media.

On the other end of the spectrum, a New York Times search of "Kazakhstan" just brings up a series of articles concerning the country's lucrative oil reserves, and foreign woes over their ownership (typical in a world plagued with energy insecurities). Nothing about what life is like in the country.

But what is life really like in Kazakhstan, the ninth largest country (per square kilometers) in the world? How do its people actually fare?

Not too well, unfortunately. Human Rights Watch recently released a report on Kazakhstan that observed the country's human rights record was inconsistent with standards established by the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), a major regional group that the Kazakh government is poised to head in 2010.

Though they might not actually do the "running of the Jew" as Borat suggests (and yes, I know that's all in farce), the Kazakh people do face extensive restrictions on freedoms of religion, expression and assembly. The HRW report, released on December 1, 2008, was based on three research missions to Kazakhstan and came to the conclusion that the Kazakh government is not showing the respect for human rights expected of a future chair of OSCE.

For one thing, official intolerance against smaller religious groups is increasing. In 2006, Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbaev issued a decree stating that people should avoid "non-traditional" religions. Earlier this year, he said of minority religious groups in the country, "We do not know their goals and we should not tolerate such arbitrariness." Minority religious groups told HRW that since the beginning of this year authorities have been taking part in a fierce media campaign to raise fear of and target members of these "non-traditional religions," including Hare Krishnas, Jehovah's Witnesses, evangelical Christians and some Muslim groups. In April, the Kazakh paper Avitrek-Region published a two-page article entitled, "Victims of sects lose property and health," which discussed how leaders of these "non-traditional" religious associations faced various criminal charges. The article also quoted the Office of the Prosecutor General as saying that 1,870 religious organizations in Kazakhstan were a "threat to national security and stability."

Human Rights Watch also wrote in its report, "Public assembly is very tightly controlled, and any politically motivated public meeting is likely to be denied a permit or broken up by police, or both." The report went on to state that groups were not allowed to protest at the city center. In Almaty, the country's largest city, the designated area for public gathering is far from the city center, and difficult to access by public transport. Peaceful protesters are often detained and face fines, and grievances to public authorities are often ignored.

In addition to such curtailing of religious and assembly freedoms, libel is a criminal offense in Kazakhstan, rather than a civil one. Anyone who has ever taken a media ethics class knows that libel punishable by the state, and not just by a lawsuit, is essentially media censorship. It's easy to mistakenly make a false statement, so the fear of heavy criminal punishment for doing so means few statements are made at all. Journalists have to work in an environment of anxiety, facing intimidating criminal charges and even personal threats.

Now, it must be made clear that Kazakhstan's human rights record is still far better from that of many other countries, even countries such as neighboring Russia and China. Minority groups and activists certainly face persecution. But people don't mysteriously disappear, they aren't inhumanely tortured by secret police, villages aren't burned, populations aren't slaughtered. This is why newspapers don't scream about Kazakh human rights violations. The real life Kazakhstan is nowhere close to Borat's Kazakhstan.

But because this country is assuming leadership of the OSCE, it is so important that Kazakhstan maintain a respectable human rights record. Otherwise, the integrity of the organization's human rights principles is at risk. In November, the Kazakh government passed a series of parliamentary drafts meant to improve rights, but HRW declared, "These measures are unlikely to result in meaningful and needed reform in media and electoral reforms."

When the Borat movie was released in 2006, Kazakhstan became a cultural phenomenon. Whether or not people realized that the movie was mocking American ignorance about the rest of the world, this, in many cases, previously unheard of country suddenly filled the airwaves. While Borat continuously joked about prevailing anti-Semitism in Kazakhstan, news articles popped up on the Kazakh government’s even funnier and more absurd reaction to the movie (it first condemned Sasha Baron Cohen, who played Borat, and then invited him to visit the country). It was all one big gag-my friends incorporated Kazakhstan into the punch lines of their jokes, and the country became a symbol for what some Americans knew and most did not. We became aware that this country was out there, but no one really sought to learn more about it.

From your desk, there is not much you will realistically do to pressure the Kazakh government to improve its civil rights record (leave that to HRW-its report should be useful at an OSCE meeting in Helsinki on December 4). But we must be aware of what's happening. This country is real, its people are real. The joke ends here.