EU Commission critical of Kazakh laws on rallies and demonstrations

The European Commission has been critical about some provisions in the Kazakh laws regulating the conduct of rallies and demonstrations.

While being highly appreciative of Kazakhstan's focus on the issue of granting the right to conduct meetings and rallies, the Commission is concerned by several aspects of this piece of legislation that allows the authorities to restrict the conduct of rallies, Personal Representative of the High Representative on Human Rights in the Common Foreign and Security Policy area Riina Kionka said at an EU-Kazakhstan roundtable in Astana on Wednesday.

The Kazakh laws impose restrictions on the venue of rallies and demonstrations, she said.

Also, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe is not happy about the provisions in the Kazakh laws that require a 10-day advance notice for a rally or that allow the police to arrest the participants of banned rallies and demonstrations 15 days before the set date, Kionka said. Kazakhstan signed an international pact on civil and political rights, she recalled.

In 2010 the government plans to draft a new law of peaceful rallies that will reflect all these comments, said Banu Nurgaziyeva, head of the social and political department at the Kazakh Ministry of Culture and Information.

"The drafting of a bill on peaceful rallies to reflect all these remarks will begin next year. (...) So we will be doing this work in the future," she said.

Interfax