Police bids to prevent activists from attending human rights meeting

By Saule Tasbulatova

Kubaidulla Sholak

Police attempted to impede a few public activists from attending a human rights meeting.

July 2, human rights activist Maks Bokayev was summoned to the financial police of Atyrau for interrogation within the criminal case of Mukhtar Ablyazov, a Kazakh tycoon on the run.   

July 4, Mr Bokayev and a member of Demos public organization Turarbek Kussainov were long questioned in the finpol office, though the two had warned officers they had flight tickets to Almaty that day for an extended meeting within United Nations Human Rights Council Recommendations to Kazakhstan Performance Monitoring.

Thanks to online check-in Kussainov and Bokayev barely caught their plane.

However, former member of the unregistered opposition party DVK [Democratic Choice of Kazakhstan] Kubaidulla Sholak was less lucky - in the morning of July 9 he had to leave for Almaty by train to attend the extended human rights meeting too, but the plan ruined, as in the early hours of July 7 police officers showed up and demanded that he goes with them.

"They had no warrant, but claimed they had a complaint against me - allegedly I had promised money to participants of the referendum against Kazakhstan in Customs Union, which took place in Almaty last March. I told officers I wouldn't go anywhere. They went away and were back shortly with a warrant. I had nothing left to do but follow them. In my explanatory note I wrote I had not promised a thing to anybody. In the result they took my ID. Now I even can't return my ticket for a refund."

Public figures and members of the opposition party associate the summons with the police's suspicion that the upcoming event is allegedly sponsored by Ablyazov.