Kazakhstan Tries to Shoot the Messenger

On August 17, police in Kazakhstan detained veteran human rights defender Bakhytzhan Toregozhina and held her for several hours apparently in connection to a criminal investigation on charges of participating in a banned extremist organization. She was picked up following social media posts she had made in support of Marat Zhylanbaev, an opposition activist who has been in prison on politically motivated charges since his conviction in November 2023 and is in deteriorating health.

Bakhytzhan Toregozhina at the 17th annual International Women of Courage (IWOC) Award Ceremony in the East Room of the White House in Washington, DC, US, March 8, 2023. © 2023 Chuck Kennedy/US State Department Photo Over the last two months, Toregozhina has posted regularly to her Facebook page, expressing concern about Zhylanbaev’s health. Between late May and mid-August, Zhylanbaev held an extended hunger strike to protest the fact of and conditions of his imprisonment. Toregozhina posted on July 25 that Zhylanbaev was faint, could not walk, and his body weight had dropped to “45 kilograms.” The Kazakh authorities swooped in; not to check on his health and ensure adequate medical attention for Zhylanbaev or to investigate his claims of poor prison conditions. And certainly not to remedy the injustice of his impr

Mihra Rittmann Humisonment in the first place (The United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention in April 2025 found Kazakhstan in breach of multiple human rights obligations over Zhylanbaev’s detention and called on the Kazakhstan government to facilitate his “immediate” release). Instead, the authorities decided to target Toregozhina, someone who has fought tirelessly to bring attention to Zhylanbaev’s wrongful imprisonment, accusing her of “disseminating knowingly false information” about Zhylanbaev. On July 31, an Almaty administrative court found Toregozhina guilty of the charges and fined her 78,640 Tenge (about US$145). The court concluded that her post about his health and body weight “created conditions for violating public order, the rights and legitimate interests of citizens or organizations or legally protected interests of society or the state.” Targeting one of Kazakhstan’s most well-known rights defenders for her peaceful activism is a clear case of intimidation and harassment. Instead of shooting the messenger and penalizing Toregozhina for her human rights work, Kazakh authorities should recognize her posts for what they are: an important public record of rights violations perpetrated in Kazakhstan that the government itself should be working to address.