Yermurat Bapi News Today

A court in Almaty sentenced on December 8 a number of officers accused of torture during Qandy Qantar (Kazakh for “Bloody January”). Out of the 11 employees of the National Security Committee, seven were handed prison sentences from 3-5 years. They were found guilty of violent conduct and torture against 54 detainees. According to a lawyer on the victims’ side, the main organizer was acquitted and the accused showed no remorse.

The foreign ministers of the five Central Asian republics and of the 27 EU member states have held their first-ever joint meeting.They came together in Luxembourg to endorse the Joint Roadmap for Deepening Ties between the European Union and Central Asia. It has the potential to be a major milestone in their relations, but the […]

Senator Andrei Lukin said on June 1 that Kazakhstan has facilitated a scheme to illegally import wheat from Russia. Lukin said that the illegal scheme allowed companies to avoid taxes and obtain fiscal benefits. According to Lukin, within the context of international sanctions imposed against Russia, “the number of cases of false imports from a neighboring country and re-exports will increase significantly”.

An investigation carried out by iStories, Der Spiegel, OCCRP, and Vlast unveiled that tech companies have circumvented Western sanctions and supplied Russia with weapons and equipment for its war in Ukraine. These suppliers did so by trading with newly-established companies that Russian nationals opened in Kazakhstan, reporters found. Drone and microelectronics imports to Kazakhstan have increased manifold since the start of Russia’s invasion in February 2022.

Kazakhstan faced a potential crisis once again, as police detained dozens of unemployed oil workers from the restive town of Zhanaozen who had taken their protests to the capital. Despite talk of a newly revamped parliament, Kazakhstan's Mazhilis appears to be just as impotent as ever. 

The early elections to the Mazhilis, the lower house of Kazakhstan’s parliament, and the maslikhats, local governments, held on March 19, marked another important step in reforming the Kazakhstani political system following the political unrest of January 2022. The reforms announced by President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev pursue two main goals (Akorda.kz, March 16, 2022). The first is to transition the country …

The ruling party still won big, monitors and opposition candidates still complained of violations at polling stations, and voters still moaned about the quality of candidates on offer. But were there some hints of change in Kazakhstan's parliamentary elections?

The family of Kazakhstan's first president, Nursultan Nazarbaev, is well-known for living extravagantly and acquiring expensive property abroad. This has often been noted in international media concerning Nazarbaev's three daughters, but his brother Bolat might be the wildest example of them all.