Humour, the latest casualty in Kazakhstan's war on dissent
The satirist behind Kazakhstan's version of The Onion potentially facing years in prison. And public shows of support for Temirlan Yensebek are being strictly policed.
Poke fun of the authorities in Kazakhstan, and there is a fair chance you will fall foul of the law.
Stand on a street corner, loudly complaining about that fact, and you will almost certainly be detained.
Last week, police officers in Almaty descended on the home of Temirlan Yensebek, the creator of satirical Instagram page QazNews24, purportedly over claims he had violated laws against incitement to ethnic-based hatred. This offence carries a potential punishment of up to seven years in prison.
Kazakhstan is not especially well-endowed with political satirists – a fact that accounts for the popularity of QazNews24. The account is essentially a Kazakh version of The Onion and is known for publishing humorous and patently invented news stories parodying current events and public figures. In case the humour is not immediately evident, posts carry disclaimers clarifying the satirical nature of the content.
The post that triggered Yensebek’s arrest appears to date back to last April, when he published a post featuring a startlingly profanity-laden song with the Kazakh-language title “Yo, Orystar” (Yo Russians). The post was a tart response to remarks made by well-known Russian TV presenter Tina Kandelaki, who had accused Kazakhstan of seeking to marginalise the use of the Russian language.
The evidence that Kandelaki used to make her claims were spurious and drew much mocking commentary.
But the language question is a genuinely sensitive one in Kazakhstan, where a not-insubstantial number of people, particularly in the country’s most populous city, Almaty, have a weak to non-existent grasp of Kazakh.
Champions of Kazakh argue that it is their native language that is often marginalised, not Russian. This explains the spikiness of the reaction to Kandelaki’s complaints.
It took Kazakh police a full nine months to react to Yensebek’s post. Shortly after the satirist was taken into custody, the courts ruled he should remain in pretrial detention for two months pending further investigations.
In a gesture of solidarity with Yensebek, Asem Zhapisheva, a journalist and activist, and Ruslan Biketov, a former editor, staged solitary pickets in Almaty on January 19 and 20, respectively. Both were swiftly detained for holding “unauthorized protests” and ordered to spend 15 days behind bars.
A few others have suffered the same fate. On Tuesday, activist Gulbakyt Otebayeva stood on an Almaty street holding up a sign reading “The road to the future is closed,” a mocking reversal of a verse from Kazakhstan’s national anthem, only to be carted away by police. A court later ordered her to pay a fine of around $530.
One-person demonstrations are technically permitted without prior approval in Kazakhstan, in line with legislation adopted in 2020. But police liberally deploy such justifications such as “threats to public order” to crack down on even solo displays of dissent.
Observers are divided as to why Yensebek’s original post should have led to his arrest after so many months. Some speculate that the timing may be the result of Russian authorities pressing Kazakhstan’s government to crack down on perceived slights against Russian identity.
Kazakhstan is in the throes of a cost-of-living crisis, so trouble from Moscow is the last thing that the government needs to worry about.
The other, not entirely unrelated, theory is that this arrest is a strategic move to silence an outspoken satirist who has not been shy of mocking Kazakhstan’s senior leadership. And in sometimes darkly comic fashion.
One case in point was the post that Yensebek published to coincide with the second anniversary of the deadly political unrest known popularly as Bloody January, which police initially reacted to by rounding up suspected troublemakers and subjecting them to physical abuse.
The post read: “On the anniversary of Bloody January, president orders preventative torture in Kazakhstan’s major cities.”
The authorities insist it is hatred, not satire, that is being policed here.
But President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev may have given the game away in remarks this week, when he complained that some Kazakhs are turning their country into an object of ridicule.
“While there are many foreigners who admire our achievements and successes … some of our compatriots, including people in showbusiness, and young people calling themselves civic activists, and even some lawmakers, are tarnishing the reputation of Kazakhstan. This is utterly incomprehensible,” he said.
Yensebek is not the first jokester to attract the heavy-handed attention of the police.
In July, a court in Astana sentence stand-up comic Alexander Merkul to 10 days in jail on charges of “petty hooliganism.” His crime was, in the wording of the court, to “publish a video of a performance in a restaurant in which he used obscene language,” thereby displaying “disrespect to others and violating public order.” A widely held suspicion, however, is that it was Merkul’s mockery of the government’s rosy narratives that landed him in trouble.
Earlier in the year, Nuraskhan Baskhozhayev, a fellow stand-up comedian, got a 15-day stretch in jail, for using offensive language during a routine in which he slammed officials for purportedly travelling to Dubai while Kazakhstan was struggling to cope with catastrophic flooding.
The authorities have been remarkably successfully in quashing opposition to the current ruling order. Parliament is a largely hollow chamber. Street opposition movements have been cowed into quiescence through robust measures. Independent and critical media are on life support. Even traditionally feisty platforms for critical voices, like the Kazakh service of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, are engaging in self-censorship to avoid reprisals.
Subversive irony is a tricky form of dissent to snuff out entirely, however.
That will not stop the Kazakh authorities from trying.