Kazakh court shuts down independent magazine for breach of language laws

The Medeu district court in Almaty ruled yesterday that the independent Kazakh magazine Adam (Human) cease publication and shut down its Facebook page for violation of state language laws.

The ruling comes several months after another Almaty court fined Adam’s editors for publishing solely in Russian. According to Kazakh law, all media outlets must publish at least half of their material in the state language of Kazakh.

The magazine, known for its critical stance on the government of President Nursultan Nazarbayev, was launched in March of this year. Adam the successor to another publication, Adam Bol (Be a Human), which was itself banned in 2014 after carrying an interview with Ukraine-based opposition journalist Aidos Sadyqov.

In January of this year, a UN report accused Mr Nazarbayev of allowing only “very limited space for the expression of dissenting views”, citing the president’s fear of civil unrest in the resource-rich Central Asian state in the wake of events in Ukraine.

Source: Kazakhstan News, The Guardian