Crossroads Asia | Politics | Central Asia

Ahead of Constitutional Referendum Social Media Companies Restrict Journalist Accounts in Kazakhstan

Censorship has been on the rise as the election date, March 15, approaches.

As Kazakhstan’s government prepares for a constitutional referendum on Sunday, March 15, media outlets and activist circles have come under attack, with the help of international tech companies.

A Meta user by the name “Giorgio Armani S.P.A” flagged a number of Instagram posts by Murat Daniyar, a video journalist who runs the Jurttyn Balasy YouTube channel. On March 9, Instagram deleted all of Daniyar’s flagged posts, leaving the account active.

The same happened with Assem Zhapisheva, a journalist with Til Kespek Joq: on March 10 her Instagram account was “purged” after the same Meta user – hiding behind the conspicuous name of a world-famous Italian fashion designer brand – flagged her posts.

“I thought that Meta gave our authorities access to fight terrorists, not journalists,” Zhapisheva wrote on her Telegram channel.

There are other examples of seemingly coordinated attacks on media personalities. Facebook deleted all posts by Irina Petrushova, the editor of Respublika, an opposition newspaper in exile, as well as a number of posts by Bakhytzhan Toregozhina, a human rights activist. Two weeks before, hackers took over the Meta accounts of Vadim Boreiko, a journalist known for his YouTube channel Giperborei.

And Meta is not the only Silicon Valley company that has engaged in blocking, purging, or throttling web accounts and traffic. The Just Journalism YouTube account run by Lukpan Akhmedyarov was blocked a number of times in the past year after coordinated requests from accounts registered in India flagged it for “inappropriate content.” Independent media outlet Vlast.kz was subjected to various DDoS attacks, two of which halted traffic to the website for hours.

While all of these attacks had a temporary character – all of the accounts and posts are usually restored within a day or two – the frequency of these instances has gone hand in hand with the government’s effort to stifle the airing of any contrarian views toward the new constitution.

Between the end of January and the beginning of February, a special Constitutional Committee was formed to implement a number of reforms to Kazakhstan’s institutional infrastructure. By the end of the consultations, it became clear that the quickest and most clear-cut solution would have been to draft a new text and submit it to a........

© The Diplomat