A court in Kazakhstan sentenced a prominent human rights activist to four years imprisonment for manslaughter yesterday in a case that many observers believe was politically motivated. The charges against Yevgeny Zhovtis stem from a car accident in July where Zhovtis hit and killed a man while driving his car. However the initial forensic exam into the accident found that Zhovtis had no alcohol in his system at the time of his accident and that there was no way he could have avoided hitting the man, who was apparently drunk when he stumbled into the street in front of Zhovtis’s car. However, in one of many anomalies in the case, the government ordered a second exam days later which found that Zhovtis was drunk while driving and could have avoided the accident. It was largely on this basis that the court convicted Zhovtis for manslaughter and a host of other traffic violations.
The conviction will not improve Kazakhstan’s reputation for human rights which has been quite dismal in recent years under the increasingly autocratic government of President Nursultan Nazarbayev. As the Director of Kazakhstan International Bureau for Human Rights and Rule of Law, the country’s only remaining human rights advocacy organization following government crackdowns on NGOs, Zhovtis is the country’s most outspoken and well known human rights activist, a position that has garnered him some unwanted attention from the government. But even for those familiar with Kazakhstan, the conduct of his trial borders on the absurd. After talking with Vera Tkachenko, one of the defense attorneys representing Zhovtis, Robert Amsterdam of the Huffington Post gave a succinct description of the trial and all its faults:
I asked Vera to explain to me the clearest signs that this was a biased, politically ordered trial, instead of an independent and fair judicial proceeding for a regular crime. First, there was the fact that the judge refused nearly every motion submitted by the defense (the only two motions admitted were to delay the trial until Sept. 2, and the addition of another lawyer). The defense counsel arranged to have two separate independent experts, one Kazakh and one Russian, examine the auto-technical expert testimony and provide corrections to all the distortions. The judge refused to admit these independent expert testimonies. Zhovtis prepared a 12-page motion denying the charges, and again, the judge refused to admit it. No exculpatory evidence was allowed into the court, and after a brief cross-examination, the judge announced that the trial would move into the final phase – which must have been a world record for speed in Kazakhstan justice.
The shell shocked defense lawyers submitted a motion to recuse the judge, whose behavior they said obviously displayed that he did not have an impartial standing. The judge left the room for just a few minutes, only to return to say that the defense does not have this right. The defense then asked for just one more day to prepare for the closing arguments – the judge denied the request, and gave them only 40 minutes. Finally, after hearing the prosecutor’s presentation, the judge spent no more than 25-30 minutes in deliberation, returning with a seven-page printed and stamped verdict – which is a procedural impossibility given the short amount of time.
This account makes clear that Zhovtis did not receive anything resembling a fair trial. But the conduct of the government has observers worried for another reason as well since Zhovtis’s conviction comes as Kazakhstan prepares to chair the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) in 2010. As the largest regional security organization in the world, the OSCE is well known for its focus on the human dimensions of security as well as the traditional military and socio-economic dimensions and is responsible for promoting democracy and rule of law programs in its member countries, including Kazakhstan. This has several human rights groups concerned, including Human Rights Watch who expressed its unease over potential political interference before the trial began. Now that the worst has been confirmed, it remains to be seen what repercussions if any Kazakhstan will face over its treatment of Zhovtis but it is likely that the OSCE’s reputation will take a hit if some action is not taken. As Andrea Berg of Human Rights Watch said in a press release, “We are shocked at how easy it is for the government to violate basic human rights just a few months before it will chair the OSCE. Kazakhstan clearly is not ready to take on a role as important as the OSCE chairmanship.”
In recent months, Zhovtis himself publically questioned whether Kazakhstan was ready to chair the organization given the government’s current position regarding human rights and dissidents. But for now, with the imprisonment of Zhovtis it appears that the government is winning its battle against civil society and no one outside the country is yet willing to stand up to the Kazakh interpretation of “democracy.”
