Feminita members have faced fines, arrests and website takedowns

Feminita members have faced fines, arrests and website takedowns in recent weeks. Public opinion on the issue is mixed.

The queer feminist group Feminita has recently experienced significant pressure in the form of fines, arrests, and censorship from the Kazakh government. Feminita believes they are being silenced in anticipation of International Women’s Day. The controversial organization advocates for women’s and LGBT rights on multiple fronts, including monitoring court proceedings, mobilizing citizens, and studying the experiences of LGBT women in Kazakhstan. The government has repeatedly denied Feminita registration as an official association, apparently in an attempt to protect a culture of traditional family values and religiosity.
The series of unfortunate events for Feminita begins on February 14, when, while holding what Feminita describes as a human rights training, they were interrupted by members of the public fund Rahym and Union of parents of Kazakhstan. Both NGO are allegedly shouted obscenities and violently attempted to force their way into the training, causing minor property damage. On February 19 and 21, respectively, Feminita co-founders Gulzada Serzhan and Zhanar Sekerbaeva were each charged 393,200 tenge (792 USD) under article 489, section 9 of Kazakhstan’s Administrative Code for “leading an unregistered association.” This was in reference to an anti-femicide march organized by Feminita nearly a year ago in May 2024, demanding a life sentence for the former Minister of National Economy Kuandyk Bishimbaev for the murder of his wife Saltanat Nukenovaya. He was sentenced to a mere 24 years in prison colony for the murder.
On February 22, Feminita activist Aktorgyn Akkenzhebalasy was fined 196,600 tenge (397 USD) for picketing in solidarity with Temirlan Yesenbek, a Kazakh satirist who was recently arrested and faces criminal charges for an Instagram post.
On February 28, Zhanar Sekerbaeva was met at her gym by three police officers. According to Feminita’s Instagram page, the officers escorted Sekerbaeva to the police department without providing a subpoena under the false pretence of providing information on a separate event. When Gulzada arrived, she learned that she had actually been brought to the station for an official report to be filed against her about the 2024 rally. She was subsequently sentence to 10 days of incarceration.
Finally, on March 3, Aktorgyn Akkenzhebalasy received the same 10-day sentence.
This series of targeted disciplinary action comes at the same time as other voices in Kazakhstan rally against the LGBT movement, which they consider a threat to traditional family values. In May 2024, a petition entitled “We are against open and hidden LGBT propaganda in the Republic of Kazakshtan” gathered 50,000 signatures. It focused on insidious attempts to normalize homosexual behavior in the rising generation. In response, the government agreed to “examine the need to limit the spread of sexual content to a child audience.” They based their decision on the Convention and the Law of the Republic of Kazakhstan “On the Rights of the Child,” which obligates state authorities, individuals, and legal entities to protect children from social environments, information, and propaganda that harm children’s health, moral, or spiritual development. Last October, parliamentary deputy Rinat Zaitov sent a request to the Prosecutor General’s Office and the National Security Committee, demanding that Feminita be recognised as an extremist organisation. Zaitov said that LGBT and feminist communities are evil that wants to ‘destroy our youth’. However, the agencies did not support this initiative. International bodies have taken a more progressive stance to treatment of Kazakhstan’s LGBT community. Recently, Kazakhstan was criticized during a UN [3] Human Rights Council (UNHCR) Universal Periodic Review (UPR) for failure to fulfill recommendations from the previous UPR to increase protections of members of the LGBT community. It also received recommendations to increase protection of freedoms of expression, peaceful association, and assembly. Opinions among the people of Kazakhstan vary widely. Many support the government’s measures to limit “LGBT propaganda” in anticipation of potential disturbances on International Women’s Day. Others are concerned that the targeted fines and arrests of recent days violate Feminita members’ consitutional rights to freedom of expression , association, assembly and dissemination of information.