Some time ago a good friend of mine – experienced Chinese blogger Isaac Mao – told me that according to the recent data there were 19.87 MLN bloggers in China, and in total there were more than 50 MLN blogs in Chinese. To compare: the population of Kazakhstan makes 15.3 MLN people. In other words, the number of bloggers in China is higher than the entire population of Kazakhstan by 4.57 MLN people. So even if all people in Kazakhstan – including the old in godforsaken villages and infants – became bloggers, we would not a patch on China.

Naturally, it’s not the way to compare. However, making the “right” comparison – it means doing it in percentage – it proves that every 65th person in China is a blogger. Theoretically, at the same “correlation of forces”, 235.4 thousand bloggers should live in Kazakhstan. This number is totally unreal, as there are only 3540 blogs registered in Kazakhstan. Another demonstration of it is that there are only 264 entries in the section “Kazakhstan” at a well-known Global Voices Online, and I have counted only three names on the first page of the section.

The question why people in Kazakhstan are so “inactive” is still open for discussion. Some say it’s because of the expensive traffic, some name the low development of ICT in the country, some keep saying people in Kazakhstan simply cannot work with a computer and all the more in the Internet. There is no doubt many people in Kazakhstan still do not know well what blogging, or to put it differently, is about. However, I think one should consider among other reasons the insufficient development of the civil awareness and the absence of an active civil and even life position of my countrymen. In my opinion, this is the major reason why so far Kazakhstan’s blogging community could be called a “cosy little gathering” of confederates.

Translation of Adam Kesher’s post from Russian-language neweurasia Kazakhstan.

James Giffen, a 65-year old American businessman, charged by the US Prosecutor with paying the bribes to top officials in Kazakhstan, will be able to use his “defense of state interests” position in the trial. This decision was announced on Friday, 26 January, by the Federal Court of Appeal. According to New York’s Timothy O’Connor, Giffen insists that in four years (between 1995 and 1999) of his term of office as President Nazarbayev’s consultant, he channeled about 80 million dollars as bribes to a number of officials of this Central Asian country, thus performing secret mission of the US special services.

Giffen, the owner of a small bank Mercator with the office on prestigious Lexington Avenue, is accused of violating the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. Giffen’s case is the biggest since the establishment of the act in 1977. He faces up to 88 years in prison if he is found guilty on all charges and only 4-7 years for non-payment of taxes (which he does not deny) – if he proves that the US Government stood behind his actions.

The prosecutors say that they have revealed his methods of bribing the officials in this oil-rich country through “kick-backs” from American companies that got the right to develop the oil deposits. They think that this way Giffen was rewarding for his mediator’s position when concluding the oil contracts – opening bank accounts in Switzerland, paying for the education of the children of Kazakhstani officials in elite foreign schools, spending millions of dollars on jewelry, snowmobiles, furs and telecommunications equipment. Read the full story »

Kazakhstan’s president Nursultan Nazarbayev is in Germany for some days and has already met German chancellor Angela Merkel. Reporters Without Borders has already demanded that Merkel should raise press freedom issues with the guest. Let’s have a look at the press conference (all links in German) the two gave after the talks:

It’s Nazarbayev’s fifth visit to Germany, he’s a welcome guest in Merkel’s word. Apart from strong bilateral business ties, there are also human bridges in the form of the many repatriated Russian Germans who emigrated from Kazakhstan. One of them, who was present during some meetings, even had the same surname as chancellor Merkel.

While for instance bigger British and American companies in the energy sector have widely invested in the Central Asian country, German SMEs have so far shown proportionately smaller interest, something this visit was also aimed at addressing. Nazarbayev met with the German economy minister as well as with representatives of many German firms.

As with Russian president Putin, Merkel was also not shy to speak about the human rights situation in Kazakhstan: Read the full story »

Finally someone has come up with it. Cash permitting, you no longer have to waste time in queues in Kazakhstan. All thanks to the smart Ruslan Akkuzhin and his colleague of the first queue-service-provider in Kazakhstan.

A new company in Kazakhstan charges customers to take their places in the country’s notorious queues.

For a small hourly fee, it provides people to stand in line for clients and then phone them when they are nearly at the front.

Some of the worst queues I’ve seen in Kazakhstan are at the OVIR, where people go to get their passports, their registration certificate (if they’re foreigners) and quite a lot of other things they might need from their always polite immigration police.

It’s a great idea to start such a business, but it would be an equally good idea to get rid of some of the queues and move to a more efficient system in many of the public institutions.

The Kazakhs might want to look to the UK, where, obviously, queuing is state sport and has also given birth to creative businesses such as Lonsto:

In an environment which is already pressurised by ever increasing visitor numbers, the demand for the streamlining of services within local authorities has never been greater.

Well, now that there’s Mr. Akkuzhin’s company, Lonsto might find Kazakhstan a difficult market to penetrate.

Cross-posted on Global Voices

Blogger’s Trial

Kazis Toguzbayev, a journalist who uploaded his articles on KUB, a group blog, was tried in Almaty, Kazakhstan, on 22 January. In his article, Toguzbayev implied that the President was covering the murders of the opposition figures. He got a two-year suspended sentence for violating the Criminal Code provisions on insulting the honor and dignity of the President with the use of media.

Toguzbayev was posting all the materials of his proceedings, as well as the court decision on the same blog, sparking debates around his case. Read the full story »

Kazakhstan is emerging as a new hot backpacker destinations and place to spend your gap year, according to a study by Travellers Connected. Surprise surprise, Sacha Baron Cohen is the reason the country has been put on the map of those keen to explore the world after finishing school:

TravellersConnected founder, Alastair Banks, said: “It’s really quite fantastic what Borat has done to raise the public profile of Kazakhstan. For the country to get more votes than Spain demonstrates the sheer power of the media.”

According to Lonely Planet, Kazakhstan is “a bewitching, dream-like landscape for those with a taste for the esoteric”, and TravellersConnected lists the following main features for those without a lot of time to get information: 1) Can get very cold, 2) Spiders and Snakes here!, 3) Get your hiking boots on, 4) Snow sports and 5) Mountain Ranges. Contrary to Russia, Kazakhstan doesn’t have the ‘Beware – Could be Dangerous’ feature, so it seems to be a safe place to go backpacking as well.

Unsurprisingly, Kazakhstan is scoring well in comparison to, wait, other European countries?

Research by TravellersConnected revealed the state is the third highest European country backpackers want information on as it accounted for 16 per cent of enquires.

For the first time a blogger was tried in Kazakhstan. He is not an Internet-savvy young cyber-dissident uploading material through proxy servers that you would imagine. His name is Kazis Toguzbayev, he is a General, a pensioner, a journalist, and a member of “Alga” party. What he did was to write an article and post on KUB, a group blog with publishing rights for anyone.

Verdict
…
On behalf of Republic of Kazakhstan
Bostandyk District Court, Almaty
…
Decided

On 2. 04. 2006, Mr. Toguzbyev K.K., created a text on his personal computer, at his own house, address …, acting with the direct intention of insulting the honour and dignity of the President of Kazakhstan.. He wrote an article titled “The Pope of Rome and the Papa of Astana – Feel the Difference!”, and included comments, which mentioned president Nazarbayev, stating that “… he wanted to cover the murder of Sarsenbayev…”.

The same day he placed the text … for public display and for the users of the Internet on the site, hosted on the server with the IP-address 65 .98 .98.53 in Hong-Kong, which is a mass media”.

This is a translation of Mr. Toguzbayev’s verdict that he copied and posted on the same blog. Throughout the investigation, initiated by the Committee for National Security (KNB), Kazis Toguzbayev was writing down and posting all about its course. Read the full story »

Kazakhstan is – as so many post-Soviet countries – a cradle of many talented sportsmen and -women. Contrary to the other Central Asian nations, this tradition does not seem to have abated with independence – so even today Kazakhstan sends big delegations to Olympic games and usually does better than e.g. neighbouring Uzbekistan.

Now, two pieces of sport news for some lighter reading this weekend: First, apparently Kazakhstan is a world-class Futsal nation, competing right now for a slot in the European Championship in Portugal (after having smashed Georgia 4:1, the chances look pretty good).

Completely unaware of the wide appeal of Futsal, I was also quite amazed to read this long report on the sport on Kazinform, especially that there are foreign legionaries playing in Kazakhstan’s national league:

But when Kazakhstan take on Georgia, hosts Malta and Cyprus in EURO preliminary round Group C from tomorrow until Sunday, they be without the foreign players that have aided their club in international competition, notably Kairat’s talented Brazilians.

The other piece of news is about professional cycling, and the presentation of the new Team Astana two days ago. The German article begins with: ‘Welcome to a place, where cycling is still really much alive!’. The 29-men strong team will be among the three biggest and most well-off ones to compete for this year’s great tours, including of course the Tour de France.

Jetting 29 cyclists over to Astana for a mere 24 hours requires some potent donors. Sponsors for the team around Alexander Vinokurov (who won the Spain Tour and got in 4th at the Tour de France some years ago) were found mainly through the lobbying of ex-PM Daniyal Akhmetov, a friend of Vinokurov and himself passionate cyclist. They include an oil company, a mining corporation, and five other Kazakh companies.

Akhmetov, who became Minister of Defence after the recent government reshuffle, invited the 11 Kazakhs, four Swiss, and 11 nationals from other countries into his ministry and gave each one of them a Kazakh military jacket and an army hat. More than 1,000 people attended the presentation in the Pyramid of Peace, and according to the article, people expect Vinokurov to at least win the Tour de France this year. Good luck!

For all the grumbling done on this and other sites regarding the government of Kazakhstan’s undemocratic tendencies, the truth, as anyone who has traveled to Central Asia knows, is that the nation is miles ahead of the other former-Soviet republics in the region in many other respects: trade, finance, infrastructure, women’s rights, etc.

Here is another field in which Kazakhstan appears to have taken the lead: public relations. Following “Borat: Cultural Learning for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan,” the Nazarbaev government has gone on the offensive to counter what it sees as gross caricatures of the Kazakh people and Kazakhstani nation. After a first clumsy attempt to intimidate Sasha Baren Cohen, the comedian behind “Borat”, the Kazakhstani Government, and particularly the Kazakhstani Embassy to the United States and Canada, seems to have wizened up to a more positive approach.

A case and point: pro-Kazakhstan clips are now available on YouTube. Take a look at “Kazakhstan: Reaching for the Future”, “Kazakhstan: A Leader in Central Asia”, and “Kazakhstan Unveiled”. While one may question the absolute accuracy of some of these videos, the truth is that putting them on YouTube is a stroke of genius. And who is rvassilenko, the poster of all these clips? He is none other than Roman Vassilenko, Press Secretary of the Kazakhstani Embassy. Mr. Vassilenko has recently been very active in a number of publications, and seems to be taking the lead in capitalizing on the potential benefits of the “Borat” film, even speaking with NPR’s “All Things Considered”.

One of the YouTube clips has more than 10,000 viewings. And while it may seem obvious to those of us in the electronic blogosphere, utilizing YouTube as a PR device is without a doubt the one of cleverest things a Central Asian embassy has done in a long time.

What follows is a translation of a post by Mira Bakhytova from Russian-language neweurasia Kazakhstan.

The criminal investigation in the case of 87 South-Kazakhstani children infected with HIV is over. The investigation lasted for half a year and resulted in 47 volumes of court material. But the most scandalous case of 2006 will be considered in the quietest trial. The trial will be conducted behind the closed doors. This decision was communicated to the journalists invited for a briefing by Ziyadinhan Perniyaz, the chief judge of the Al-Farabi District Court, Shymkent. The Prosecutor’s office transferred 28 criminal cases – 47 thick folders, accusing 21 people, to this exact Court. 18 people are directly connected to the medical work.

Negligence, fraud, bribery and embezzlement are four main articles of the Criminal Code that are being invoked here. Former head of the regional department of healthcare Nursulu Tasmagambetova is among the accused, as well as two of her deputies and chief physicians of several children’s hospitals. According the Ziyadinhan Perniyaz, Tasmagambetova is accused of negligence. The maximum term of punishment for this crime is five years of imprisonment. Read the full story »