KZBlog

Kazakhstan is in the process of introducing new passports with biometric data encoded in them. This is not newsworthy as many other countries are doing the same thing. To ensure that Kazakhstan citizens can freely travel around the world, the introduction of biometric passports is necessary.

What is interesting is that the new passports will include the holder’s ethnicity (or nationality, as it is called in the Russian-speaking world). For now that information will be simple text and not in biometric form i.e. there will not be a piece of DNA in there.

While Soviet-era ID documents always included the holder’s ethnicity, the current passports do not include any information about ethnicity (only citizenship), although national ID cards do. While Kazakhstan promotes itself as country of inter-ethnic tolerance where 120 ethnic groups live side-by-side in peace, to some Western observers the emphasis on ethnic identification seems to belie the image of tolerance. While there are few signs of tension, most citizens of Kazakhstan (or any other post-Soviet state) identify people by ethnic group. Walking down the street, they may say to you, “That guy is a Jew.”, “She is an Armenian.”, “I want to go to that store, the one run by the Tatars.” It is not uncommon for them to refer to friends and colleagues by race: “The Azerbaijani at work said…” or to refer to ethnic stereotypes: Uzbeks are good traders, but slow. Jews are clever and greedy. Kazakhs are clever, but lazy. And so on. For this American who grew up being taught that race is less important than character it is very off-putting. However, a citizen of Kazakhstan would say there is nothing sinister or prejudicial about ethnic awareness, that ethnic identity and culture is a simple fact of life.

It is also interesting to note that the push for nationality to be included in the new passports came from Parliament and not from the people. Members of Parliament claim that failing to include ethnicity would be to deny that ethnic groups exist and thus to deny someone’s ethnicity all together. Some have argued however that the issue is over a government document, not an entire national or cultural policy. Furthermore, the passports are designed to be used by foreign customs agents to identify the holder. Thus information about nationality is not as useful as information about appearance.

However the Minister of Justice, Zagipa Baliyeva, claims that every citizen has the right to identify their nationality and will change the new passports, of which 2700 have already been issued. She also noted that of all the countries in the world, only Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan include ethnic identity on their passports.

So dear readers, especially those of you from Kazakhstan and the CIS, how do you feel about this issue? Do you want your nationality on your passport?