The blogger\u2019s daughter, Togzhan Tuzel, told VOA she believes authorities are punishing Utepova for commentary on social media about opposition movements such as the Democratic Choice of Kazakhstan (DVK) and Koshe Partiasy (Street Party), and for publishing articles on alleged \u201cattempts by the government to manipulate\u201d public opinion. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt is not normal for hundreds of people to be persecuted in Kazakhstan every year on charges of extremism and terrorism, for speaking out peacefully on social media and participating in small street rallies,\u201d Tuzel said, adding that dozens of activists are being prosecuted under the same criminal charges as her mother. <\/p>\n
Two days before Utepova\u2019s Dec. 11 release from the clinic, a court extended her house arrest until January 17. The journalist\u2019s lawyer was presented with the order during an online court session, Tuzel said. <\/p>\n Freedom of expression is heavily curtailed in Kazakhstan, where authorities use accusations such as participating in or supporting extremist groups to target government critics or those who report favorably of political movements calling for reform, rights groups say. The country ranks 157 out of 180 countries on the Reporters Without Borders Press Freedom Index, where 1 is the most free. <\/p>\n Kazakhstan\u2019s Ministry of Foreign Affairs did not respond to VOA\u2019s request for comment. <\/p>\n Utepova has been released from the clinic. But Heather McGill, a Central Asia researcher at Amnesty International, says the journalist\u2019s case is by no means an isolated incident. In 2019, blogger Ardak Ashym was ordered into psychiatric care for insulting a state official on social media. <\/p>\n The cases suggest Kazakhstan has not fully rid itself of the Soviet-era tactic of punitive psychiatry, McGill said, adding that \u201cpsychiatry can be misused to attempt to put pressure on critics of the government.\u201d <\/p>\n A similar tactic has also been seen in Vietnam where authorities this year ordered Le Anh Hung, a VOA contributor and blogger, and Pham Chi Thanh, who covered politics and social issues on his blog, into psychiatric clinics over their critical comments and reporting. <\/p>\n Utepova\u2019s lawyer Galym Nurpeisov told VOA that lately Kazakhstan's government has been pursuing journalists and bloggers for bringing up politics. <\/p>\n Yevgeniy Zhovtis, director of the human rights organization Kazakhstan International Bureau for Human Rights and Rule of Law, told VOA that authorities are tough on critics. <\/p>\n \u201cThere are many cases of pressure on the political opposition, independent journalists and bloggers, in particular supporters of opposition movements Democratic Choice of Kazakhstan and Koshe Partiasy,\u201d Zhovtis said. <\/p>\n Zhovtis said he believes the accusations are just an excuse to punish dissidents. <\/p>\n The DVK is a political opposition movement founded by Mukhtar Ablyazov, a former minister and critic of the government who fled to Europe to avoid embezzlement charges that supporters say are politically motivated. A court banned the DVK for being an \u201cextremist organization\u201d in March 2018. The Koshe Partiasy, widely viewed by activists as the successor of DVK, was also deemed an \u201cextremist organization\u201d by Kazakh authorities in May. <\/p>\n Government officials say the groups propagate \u201cthe forcible change of Kazakhstan\u2019s constitutional order\u201d and are therefore extremist, but supporters say their goal is democratic reforms. <\/p>\n Authorities have a track record of targeting outspoken activists who criticize the government or its policies, by using vague and overbroad criminal charges, Mihra Rittmann, a Central Asia researcher at the New York-based Human Rights Watch, told VOA. <\/p>\n This year alone Kazakh authorities opened dozens of criminal cases on charges of participating in a banned extremist organization, the same charge Utepova is facing, Rittmann said. <\/p>\n \u201cWhat constitutes \u2018extremist\u2019 actions or speech isn\u2019t clearly defined in Kazakh law, allowing for authorities in Kazakhstan to invoke allegations of \u2018extremism\u2019 to try and silence critical voices,\u201d Rittman said. <\/p>\n Fionnuala N\u00ed Aol\u00e1in, the UN special rapporteur for protecting human rights while countering terrorism, has expressed serious concern about this issue. <\/p>\n After a visit to Kazakhstan in May 2019,\u202fAol\u00e1in\u202fconcluded that\u202fthe broad definitions of \u201cextremism\u201d and \u201cinciting discord\u201d in Kazakh law \u201care used to unduly restrict freedoms of religion, expression, assembly and association.\u201d <\/p>\n Maksym Sytnikov, advocacy officer at Warsaw-based Open Dialogue Foundation, which focuses on human rights in post-Soviet area, told VOA the international community should sanction any senior Kazakhstani officials found to be responsible for punitive psychiatry, political assassinations, and torture. <\/p>\n \u201cThe governments of democratic states\u202fshould publicly condemn every case of political persecution and the lack of investigation into punitive psychiatry, torture and other gross violations by [Kazakhstan\u2019s] law enforcement authorities,\u201d Sytnikov said. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" For nearly three weeks Kazakhstan blogger Aigul Utepova was detained in a psychiatric clinic for \u201cobservation\u201d after she wrote critical posts of the government on social media. Utepova, who has over 8,000 followers on both her Facebook page and YouTube channel, had already been under house arrest since September when a court in Kazakhstan\u2019s capital, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":100462,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/toptrendingnews.co\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100461"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/toptrendingnews.co\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/toptrendingnews.co\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/toptrendingnews.co\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/toptrendingnews.co\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=100461"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/toptrendingnews.co\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100461\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/toptrendingnews.co\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/100462"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/toptrendingnews.co\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=100461"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/toptrendingnews.co\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=100461"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/toptrendingnews.co\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=100461"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Map](\"https:\/\/toptrendingnews.co\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/12\/Almaty-Kazakhstan.jpg\")
<\/figure>\n![\"Vietnamese](\"https:\/\/toptrendingnews.co\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/12\/AP20317176893747.jpg\")
Vietnam Moves Blogger From Prison to Psychiatric HospitalBlogger and author Pham Thanh, who published book critical of Vietnam\u2019s leader, is second jailed journalist forced into psychiatric care\u202f<\/p>\n