Rich natural resources and trade opportunities plus a massive PR campaign make it easy to turn a blind eye. But I cannot Five years ago my family was ripped apart when Kazakhstan government agents took my father, Mukhtar Dzhakishev,into custody. He has remained imprisoned ever since. After his recent transfer to a penal colony in the Karaganda region, made infamous by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, my mother,...
One of Kazakhstan's few remaining independent newspapers, the weekly Assandi Times, has been ordered to close by a court in Almaty, the country's largest city. Yesterday (21 April), the court ruled that the paper, which has a national circulation of about 7,500, should cease publication because it was deemed to be part of Respublika, a newspaper banned in December 2012. Continue reading... ...
A Soyuz rocket lifts off from a launch site in Kazakhstan on Tuesday before travelling to the International Space Station. The rocket, carrying Russians Alexander Skvortsov and Oleg Artemyev and American Steve Swanson, entered a designated orbit 10 minutes after launching, but experienced engine problems shortly before it was due to dock. It is now expected to arrive at 11.58pm GMT on Thursday two...
As we celebrate the art, the international organisation defending writers' freedom offers a selection of voices that have been silenced by repression • Poetry Parnassus: read a poem from every Olympic nation Aron Atabek – Kazakhstan The poet, journalist and activist Aron Atabek has been in prison since 2007 and has spent much of his incarceration in solitary confinement. In December 2012, following...
Malaysian PM says search will be extended across vast area from central Asia to southern ocean after new satellite data became available Kate Hodal ...
The Soyuz space capsule has returned one American and two Russians safely back to Earth after more than six months on the International Space Station ...
s takeover of the Crimean peninsula Russia's takeover of the Crimean peninsula has drawn condemnation from the west, but reaction has been more varied in the 14 former Soviet republics in Russia's "near abroad". Many have played a balancing act between Russia and the west, and almost all have significant Russian-speaking populations – like the one that served as a justification for Moscow's intervention...
s happening, how it got to this point, and why some people say 'the Ukraine' Recent history The standoff between Ukrainian and pro-Russian forces continues as global leaders push for a diplomatic solution to the conflict in Ukraine. On Tuesday, Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered troops near Ukraine's border to return to their bases as the US secretary of state, John Kerry, visited Kiev. The latest...
s post-facto request on Saturday to the upper house of the Russian parliament to approve the use of military forces in Ukraine should not really have come as much of a surprise. There were few who had any doubts that the uniformed men who seized airports on the Crimean peninsula on Friday were Russian forces. The big question, however, is: what does Putin actually want? Attempting to explain the idea...
Uproar in Kazakhstan, Russia and Belarus as Putin-led trade bloc moves to ban lacy underwear ...
s a rather flippant introduction to a weighty subject. Vladimir Putin's dream of a Eurasian Union, a vast trade and political bloc stretching from China to the edge of the EU, began taking shape in 2010 with the ECU, a free-trade customs union binding Russia, Kazakhstan and Belarus. A carelessly worded ECU regulation on the absorbency of non-natural materials has sparked colourful protests from wearers...
s "billionaires' row" , will be extradited to Russia or Ukraine, a French court ruled. Ablyazov, 50, who is accused of embezzling £3bn from the state-owned Kazakh bank BTA, was found guilty of contempt of court in London for trying to hide more than £34m of assets, including Carlton House, his seven-bedroom home on The Bishops Avenue , and an £18m 100-acre estate near Windsor called Oakland Park. A...
s world, wrote the Lithuanian poet and essayist Tomas Venclova, is a world "moved away from God a great distance, such a distance that perhaps even God cannot easily overcome it". It is, said Venclova, a "concentration camp zone, where space is turned into emptiness, and time turned into disappearance". Other writers had been there before her. But Russian poets such as Brodsky or Derieva mobilise furiously...
s deportation in May and subsequent detention in Kazakhstan caused uproar in Italy Alma Shalabayeva, whose husband, a Kazakh banker wanted for fraud in three countries, received a warm personal greeting from Italy's foreign minister on Friday when she flew back to Rome months after being summarily expelled. Shalabayeva's husband, Mukhtar Ablyazov, is an adversary of the Kazakh president, Nursultan...
s most notorious prisons on false charges. Vadim has worked for many years to expose the ill-treatment of prisoners in Kazakhstan, including in the notorious prison EC 164/4 where he is currently being detained. He has faced torture and abuse for exposing the atrocious conditions and appalling treatment of detainees, including by leaking footage of police brutality. In a trial without jury, which has...
s vast Le Sporting banquet hall, where 800 guests have responded to an invitation from one of central Asia's most powerful, and secretive, oligarchs. The host has packed the venue's gardens with white roses and arranged for entertainment from the singer Jennifer Lopez and French DJ David Guetta. Several guests execute an impromptu lezginka, a traditional dance from the Caucasus, and a crowd forms to...
s Independence Square, Vitali Selyk hands out leaflets declaring: "For a European future." A few hundred metres away, posters outside the metro station warn that closer ties with the EU will lead Ukraine down a path of rising prices, job losses and legalised gay marriages. These different visions of the future reflect rising tension in Ukraine in the face of a critical east-or-west moment. Next week,...
s multimillion-pound deal to advise Kazakhstan's leadership on good governance has produced no change for the better or advance of democratic rights in the authoritarian nation, freedom campaigners say. At the end of Blair's two-year contract, which lapsed at the end of October and may yet be renewed, activists said the country had actually experienced heavy reversals in civil liberties and freedom...
Two Russian cosmonauts and a US astronaut return to Earth on Tuesday after 166 days in orbit aboard the International Space Station ...
s from naivety, greed or grandiosity, some celebrities are remarkably nonchalant about being friendly with tyrants The strange surge of celebrity-dictator friendships isn't going unremarked. From athletes to pop artists, American icons are playing nice with controversial world leaders. Celebrities, such as Dennis Rodman, who claim they intend to mend ties between troubled countries and the US may have...