Galymzhan Zhakiyanov: Altynbek Sarsenbayev was a thorn in the hide of the Kazakh regime
Presidential election in Kazakhstan is over but Kazakh opposition leaders remain the talk of the day. Ex-mayor of Alma-Ata Zamanbek Nurkadilov was assassinated last autumn, former ambassador to Russia Altynbek Sarsenbayev this February. Opposition leader Galymzhan Zhakiyanov was released from jail not long ago. Here is an interview with Zhakiyanov.
Question: You were charged with and convicted under "criminal" articles but everyone is convinced of political nature of the trial. Why?
Galymzhan Zhakiyanov: It was political indeed. I was accused of misuse of 12 million tenges ($13,000) from the akim's surplus fund, i.e. of misuse of the sums I could not spend by definition.
It did not hold water, you know. I acted in accordance with the law. In fact, the charges against me looked particularly quaint against the background of the billions being embezzled by senior state officials right from the national budget. Or against the background of the corruption scandals involving the regime for that matter. My lawyers proved my innocence in the courtroom in 2002 and proved political nature of the trial beyond the shadow of doubt.
Materials were immediately posted on my web site (zhakiyanov.info). All international human rights organizations agreed that the trial was political. The European Parliament, US Congress, and governments of other democratic countries condemned the unfairness of the trial in their resolutions on more than one occasion. So, I'm free again on a grant of parole after four years behind the bars. As a matter of fact, they were supposed to release me on October 2, 2005, but did so only on January 14, 2006.
Question: Why is that?
Galymzhan Zhakiyanov: President of Kazakhstan was elected on December 4, 2005. I hear Nursultan Nazarbayev was afraid that I might run for president myself or somehow influence the outcome of the presidential race. I had a talk with the colony administration and was told that I would be released on December 3, i.e. before the election. In fact, they released me only after Nazarbayev's inauguration. That I spent more time behind the bars than I was supposed to is another confirmation of the political nature of the process.
Question: There are the rumors that you were released in return for a firm promise to Nursultan Abishevich to drop politics altogether...
Galymzhan Zhakiyanov: These rumors are spread by Kazakh secret services in the hope to compromise me in the eyes of my followers. Well, I will remain in the opposition to the regime. I will not abandon my political views.
Question: Have there been attempts to force you to abandon them?
Galymzhan Zhakiyanov: Of course. I had visitors in the colony, you know. The heads of Kazakh secret services including Dutbayev [chairman of the National Security Committee who resigned in the wake of Sarsenbayev's assassination - Versiya] came for "a chat" every now and then. They used persuasion and threats, they said I should abandon politics if I knew what was good for me and my family. They did not even balk at blackmail. I was told that I would be sentenced to ten years imprisonment again because new charges had been pressed, I was told that I would not live to the end of the sentence...
Question: Did they employ any other methods apart from "conversations"?
Galymzhan Zhakiyanov: Do you mean torture? No. They were probably afraid it would become public knowledge. I had international human rights organizations, some deputies of our parliament, and oppositionist media on my side. General public was constantly updated on encroachments on my rights and on the situation in general. The way I see it, that's the only thing that saved me from physical extermination and helped me survive.
Question: Was there an actual threat to life?
Galymzhan Zhakiyanov: Yes, there was. One of the former heads of the Penitentiary System Committee [analog of the Russian Federal Penitentiary Service - Versiya] told me he had been expressly ordered to orchestrate my demise. It was supposed to look like a banal fight among inmates. The man was ordered to handpick executioners, junkies with alleged grievances. I was to be stabbed. To make the long story short, the man I'm talking about refused to carry out the order. It cost him his position. He was sacked.
I was later informed of another provocation. I was to be clubbed to death in sleep. Fortunately, I was told of this plan in advance. I wrote a letter to the chief warden warning him that the blame for the provocation would be pinned on him alone. He responded by putting me in a punishment cell, the only place where he thought I would be safe.
Question: Sarsenbayev, the democratic opposition leader in your absence, was killed on February 13. Was it assassination?
Galymzhan Zhakiyanov: Without doubt. Even thought the authorities deny it. All sorts of hypotheses but political were put forth - a hunting accident, banal crime, conflict with business rivals... The men who knew Altynbek know better. When the suspected murderers were finally arrested, all denials became pointless because of who the arrestees were - officers of the National Security Committee. The interior minister then said that it had been a contract killing organized by Yerzhan Utembayev, chief of the senate's apparat. Utembayev was bagged and allegedly confessed. He said he had wanted Sarsenbayev killed out of personal animosity. The investigation even claims that Utembayev loaned $60,000 to pay the killers. And society is supposed to swallow it! Everybody knows what this hypothesis really is - a pack of lies. How bloodthirsty a man ought to be to have his "offender" and two innocent people murdered! In the meantime I know that Utembayev is not like that, not like what the authorities present him to be. I know what I'm talking about because I know Utembayev. We worked together once. Besides, even his alleged "personal animosity" is extremely suspicious as a motive. After all, Sarsenbayev and he have never met.
Question: Why was Sarsenbayev assassinated?
Galymzhan Zhakiyanov: Because he was a thorn in the hide of the regime. He was one of the key leaders of the Kazakh opposition, its ideologist and inspirer. We've known each other since the middle of the 1990's. We had a lot in common, you know. We were born in Kazakh villages, we studied in Moscow. We met in 1993 when he was the youngest minister of the Cabinet and I the youngest governor. We established the Kazakhstan's Democratic Choice together in 2001. In fact, Sarsenbayev did not become an opposition leader all at once. We decided at first that it would be better for the common cause to have him in the position of secretary of the Security Council. Nazarbayev listened to Sarsenbayev then. Sarsenbayev was a brilliant political scientist who knew in what direction the country should develop better than others did.
Establishing the Kazakhstan's Democratic Choice, we hoped that Nazarbayev would accept and back our democratic program. It never happened. Nazarbayev would not even hear about democratic changes. He kept saying that the era of democracy had not come yet. And so it went on until the day when we openly challenged the regime. We made our political views public knowledge on November 19, 2001, and Nazarbayev sacked us all the following day.
I was imprisoned soon after that. Sarsenbayev was sent to Russia as ambassador.
Sarsenbayev as a man of honor. When I was sentenced to seven years imprisonment and escorted to the Kushmurun colony, Sarsenbayev's daughter came to the father and said, "How can you keep working for Nazarbayev when you friend is in jail?" He resigned. Sarsenbayev became Ak Zhol chairman and began demanding my release from colony.
Generally speaking, the opposition was enlivened by Sarsenbayev's appearance. He provided the ideological core it had previously lacked.
Question: The way I see it, the Kazakh authorities are convinced that in the war on the opposition everything goes...
Galymzhan Zhakiyanov: Yes, they are using every conceivable method of unlawful pressure traditional for the post-Soviet territory as such. The opposition does not have a place to convene its congresses in, and finding it is difficult indeed. Whenever we lease a restaurant for the purpose, its owners have visitors from the local power structures the following day. They are usually advised to think about their own future. As a matter of fact, outright provocations were staged in the regions where activists of the Movement For Fair Kazakhstan had meetings and conferences. Some criminals throw rocks at opposition leaders in the country that calls itself a democracy and aspires for OSCE chairmanship! Moreover, it happens right in front of representatives of law enforcement agencies who are present too! There were several such episodes, you know.
Nurkadilov, ex-mayor of Alma-Ata who sided up with the opposition eighteen months ago, was assassinated shortly before the presidential election. Official spokesmen for the Interior Ministry said a month later that he had taken his own life. What sane man will believe that someone can commit suicide by shooting himself twice in the heart and once in the head?
Question: Aren't you afraid of becoming the next victim?
Galymzhan Zhakiyanov: I have survived so far. I know that I may be killed too but I keep on doing what I did before imprisonment - promoting ideas of democracy and freedom in Kazakhstan. I do not intend to emigrate.
Question: Do you count on a "revolution" in Kazakhstan like those that took place in Georgia and Ukraine?
Galymzhan Zhakiyanov: As I see it, revolutions stipulate installation of a new political regime - the way it happened in France in 1789 or in Russia in 1917 when the monarchy was toppled. It was not revolutions in Georgia, Ukraine, or Kyrgyzstan. It's just that new men appeared in the corridors of power there in the wake of parliamentary or presidential elections the previous rulers had tried to falsify. And regular replacement is one of the basic principles of democracy.
I do not plan to organize a revolution in Kazakhstan. All I want is democracy for my country. I want the people choosing the authorities in free and fair elections.
From our folders:
Galymzhan Zhakiyanov is the Kazakh opposition leader. Before ending up in the opposition to the regime, Zhakiyanov was in civil service as akim or governor of the Semipalatinsk region, the head of the Agency for Strategic Resources Control, and akim of the Pavlodar region between 1997 and 2001.
Zhakiyanov established the Kazakhstan's Democratic Choice in November 2001. Organizers of the movement were ousted from their positions shortly afterwards. In 2002, Zhakiyanov was sentenced to seven years imprisonment for alleged misuse of $13,000. The court ordered the Kazakhstan's Democratic Choice disbanded in 2005, on the eve of the presidential election. Zhakiyanov was released from imprisonment on January 14, 2006.
Versiya, No 10, March 13, 2006, p. 12
Translated by Ferghana.Ru