KAZAKHSTAN: Media watchdog concerned over draft law on media

ANKARA, 19 December 2003 (IRIN) - An international media watchdog, has expressed concern over a draft law on the mass media in Kazakhstan, describing it as flawed. "Basically, we are of the view that the law is so fundamentally flawed at the moment that it needs to be completely put aside and work on revising the existing law started from scratch," Toby Mendel, Article 19's law and Asia programmes director, told IRIN from Toronto, adding that the existing law was also very problematic. Article 19, a London-based group working worldwide to combat censorship by promoting freedom of expression and access to official information, voiced serious concerns over the draft law in September. "A number of its provisions impose significant restrictions on freedom of expression, and the general scope of the law is extremely broad. One problem lies in the attempt to regulate every aspect of the media, and every media sector, in a single piece of legislation," the group said in a report, adding that it led to legal regimes for registration, licensing, accreditation and access to information that was "vaguely delineated and often inappropriate". The report also said that the imposition of registration, licensing and accreditation systems, all overseen by bodies which were not independent of government, represented an "excessive exercise of state control over the press, which was inconsistent with international guarantees of freedom of expression". In that context, in his recent letter to the Kazakh leadership, Mendel urged President Nursultan Nazarbayev to discontinue consideration of the draft law currently under consideration and instead put in place a process of consultation whereby problems with the existing law could be addressed in an open, democratic fashion. Earlier this month, a Kazakh media outlet reported that in comments on the media bill, Nazarbayev had called for the silencing of some media outlets. "Stability in the country is the most important issue for our multinational state. That is why there should be no tolerance of calls for sabotage and disobedience, brainwashing people to believe that matters are so bad in our country," he said, asserting that some newspapers and electronic media were painting a grim picture of the situation, a practice which, according to him, should be stopped by law, no matter what media outlet it was, domestic or foreign. "We do not generally support the idea of general media laws at all, and do not see the need for them. Perhaps in Kazakhstan, in an ideal world, it would be useful to have a law setting out the freedom of the press," Mendel maintained, noting that it could be a way of breaking with the past. He also called on the international community to continue engaging in diplomatic and other efforts to convince the Kazakh leadership that it was unacceptable to democratic nations to see such fundamentally undemocratic laws introduced, warning that these could - at least over the longer term - have all sorts of implications, including in terms of trade and other relations. In its Freedom of the Press 2003 report, Freedom House, an international watchdog group working to advance the worldwide expansion of political and economic freedom, rated Kazakhstan's press as not free, noting that officials in Kazakhstan had cracked down on investigative reporters, charging several with alleged offences in response to their coverage of corruption and human rights issues.