KZBlog

The Kazakhstan Embassy has seen fit to respond to an article on Huffington post giving Kazakhstan a low midterm grade for its OSCE Chairmanship.

Mr. Ardaq Adilet made a number of comments criticizing the article and these have been complied into a special report sent out by the Kazakhstan Embassy to the US. I always have trouble finding where they post the Embassy newsletter online but the text is basically the same as in Ardaq’s comments on the Huffington post article.

Interestingly at the same time, I discovered this press release from the Parliamentary Assembly of the OSCE about Zhovtis stating that:

In his report to Joao Soares, the President of the OSCE Parliamentary, Mr. Mecacci, the Assembly’s rapporteur on human dimension issues, also said that this case raises serious questions about the respect for the individual to receive a fair trial in Kazakhstan. Mr. Zhovtis has been subjected too long to a sentence he does not deserve, he reported, adding that the Kazakh OSCE Chairmanship has a special responsibility, like all previous OSCE chairs, to make sure that the OSCE commitments in the field of human dimension are respected….Mr. Mecacci also expressed his disappointment that the press release issued immediately after last week’s visit was not published on the OSCE website on instructions from the Kazakh Chairmanship.

So that is one point that cannot be denied easily. Kazakhstan did try to block the report from the website, and rather than explain why, they seem to be putting out reports that say, “Well it ended up on the website anyway so why are you bothering us about it?”