Kazakhstan president fires 6 supreme court justices for corruption

Kazakh president Nursultan Nazarbayev on Thursday discharged six justices of the Supreme Court of the Republic of Kazakhstan for corruption. The Kazakh Prosecutor-General's Office has opened criminal cases against the judges, who are suspected of corruption activity. The Kazakh State Agency for Combating Economic Crimes and Corruption approached Nazarbayev and asked him to remove the judges. Supreme Court chairman Musabek Alimbekov resigned after the charges were filed. Senators voted unanimously to approve Nazarbayev's decision and subsequently approved the appointment of Bektas Beknazarov, chairman of the Aktobe Oblast Court, to replace Alimbekov.

Human rights groups have closely scrutinized Kazakhstan's adherence to its international human rights obligations. Kazakhstan submitted to a UPR - Universal Periodic Review by the UN Human Rights Council in February 2010. Kazakhstan accepted 121 of the recommendations to reduce human rights violation, particularly with respect to freedom of the press. In August 2009, the Supreme Court affirmed the conviction of publisher Ramazan Esergepov, who was sentenced to three years in jail for revealing state secrets in his newspaper. A representative of Freedom of the Media at the Organization for OSCE - Security and Co-operation in Europe said that revealing public corruption is "the main duty of the journalists acting in the public interest," and that "[c]riminal sanctions for 'breach of secrecy' should only apply to the officials whose job descriptions stipulate the duty to protect sensitive information, but not to citizens."

(Published by Jurist - April 16, 2011)