Yertysbaev goes online
Kazakhstan, Media and Internet4 Comments
Now that the controversial media law has been signed by the President, Information Minister Yermukhamet Yertysbayev plans to tighten control of the World Wide Web’s Kazakhstan part, according to Reuters.
Internet journalism and other loosely regulated media could harm Kazakhstan’s national security.
Yertysbaev promised to develop the state policy on Kazakh web by the end of this year. Last year they closed Sasha Baron Cohen’s website in .kz domain (back then, Dariga Nazarbayeva defended him, and this year she appeared as an advocate of media freedom too) saying that sites in .kz domain can only be maintained from Kazakhstan. It seems that this year the content of the sites will be watched more closely. This will reach out to independent or opposition newspapers that operate online, such as mizinov.net, which already moved to zonakz.net.
Together with national security, Yertysbaev is concerned with the lies in the Internet. It is now a criminal offence to libel the officials and insult the honor and dignity of the President and many journalists have been sued for that. In the past the access to some websites such as navigator.kz, kub.kz, and eurasia.ru was blocked from within Kazakhstan, through the only one Internet service provider, the state-run Kazakhtelecom.
Those who think it’s impossible to control the Internet can continue living in the world of illusions,
said Yertysbaev in an interview to Kazakhstan’s Vremya newspaper.
Now that Dariga Nazarbaeva seems to have lost the battle, Yertysbaev will surely help Kazakhstan to wake up into reality.
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[...] Shortly after the SCO meeting, Yertysbayev promised to develop the new policy on regulation of the Internet media in Kazakhstan (see China, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan for regional examples). Indeed, the information security was one of the issues on the agenda of the SCO meeting, where it was decided to establish the expert groups in the member-states to figure out how to solve the common problem of increasing insecurity related to development of information technology, that can be used for “criminal, terrorist, military or political purposes that run counter to the maintenance of international security.” Well, Internet did prove to be a powerful instrument promoting regional cooperation in the end. [...]
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