Another analytical discussion on the CABAR.asia platform was devoted to the problems of the implementation of such a constitutional right as freedom of expression and holding public actions in the countries of Central Asia.
Officially, the Constitution of each Central Asian country guarantees freedom of expression, speech, and information. One of the instruments for exercising these freedoms is the right to hold public rallies, peaceful assemblies, processions, pickets, and demonstrations. However, is it easy to exercise these rights in reality? What has changed in the culture of holding such public events in the Central Asian countries? What is the authorities’ reaction to such events? How did the rallies and their treatment by the citizens, activists, civil society, and authorities evolve?
The experts from four countries of the Central Asian region with an experience of participating in rallies and other public events discussed these and other issues.
The expert from Kazakhstan was Roman Reimer, co-founder of the Public Foundation “Erkindik Qanaty” [“Wings of Liberty” – Tr.], practicing lawyer; from Kyrgyzstan – Gulshaiyr Abdirasulova, executive director of the human rights organisation “Kylym Shamy” [“Light of the century” – Tr.], legal expert, co-author of the Section “Human Rights and Freedoms” of the Constitution of Kyrgyzstan; from Tajikistan – Rajabi Mirzo, media expert, journalist, analyst, civil activist, participant in public rallies, who suffered from the authorities’ reaction to the rally; from Uzbekistan – Timur Ismailov, civic activist, initiator of the “Immortal Regiment” march in Uzbekistan. He actively studied the legislation of Uzbekistan since 2017 because of the difficulties he encountered in organising this peaceful procession.
Kazakhstan: Citizens Demonstrate a High Culture of Holding Rallies
Since 2020, a new law on peaceful assemblies initiated by the second President of the country Tokayev has been in force in Kazakhstan. Although the authorities consider this law progressive and useful, “it contains all those negative generic stains present in the 1995 law”, as Roman Reimer believes.
“Although the law is new, first, it still includes a de facto permit procedure – not a notification one. Second, our citizens have the right to participate in peaceful assemblies only in those city areas which the relevant law mentions. Moreover, there is a huge problem: the state bodies that allow peaceful assemblies vaguely define the basis on which they can either forbid a peaceful assembly, or restrict it in its process, or stop it at any stage,” Reimer said.
“This law on peaceful assemblies does not comply with the standards and national laws, including the Constitution of the Republic of Kazakhstan, which states clearly that people have the right to peacefully and without arms assemble on the streets of cities and towns,” the Kazakh expert stated the position of human rights activists from his country.
According to Roman Reimer, peaceful rallies were held throughout Kazakhstan’s independence and their participants never violated the law. If there were violations, the rallies’ participants had nothing to do with them.
“Violations of the law or provocations were somehow initiated either by the representatives of the local executive authorities, the law enforcement agencies, or people who were somehow planted in peaceful demonstrators’ groups from inside or outside to conduct any kind of provocation,” said Roman Reimer.
Speaking of the Kazakhstan citizens, a fairly high level of culture of holding peaceful rallies has been formed in the country.
“People can gather peacefully without arms. They do it within the logic of the law… They do it within the logic of all those additional national and international legal acts, do not violate law and order, do not interfere with road traffic. They do everything possible to ensure that a rally is held peacefully and openly, so that the people’s demands are heard by those intended. At those peaceful assemblies I have participated in lately, people even clean up the trash,” he said.
Kyrgyzstan: Culture of Holding Rallies is Improving but the Authorities Consider Them a Threat
The Constitution of Kyrgyzstan allows and guarantees everyone the right to freely gather, hold public events, and bring their problems, questions, or express their opinion to the authorities. However, Kyrgyzstan went a very long and difficult way to such an unhindered right, as Gulshaiyr Abdirasulova highlighted.
“Until 2012, there was no culture of holding peaceful rallies and their legal regulation in the Kyrgyz Republic. The authorities always considered any peaceful gathering a threat, so the hippodrome or the parks were the main venues for holding them. People wanted to be heard by the decision-makers or those who could solve their problems. Eventually, the problems accumulated and turned into conflicts – not because people were initially set up for conflict and violence but because the authorities considered them a threat and did not know how to conduct a constructive dialogue with the protesters, and sometimes, provoked people by organising counter-gatherings against them and planting in provocateurs,” Abdirasulova said.
Now, the provisions of the Constitution and the Law on Peaceful Assemblies fully reflect the principle of presumption in favour of holding assemblies and do not require any permission to hold an assembly; everyone has a right to file a notification. The main requirement for holding assemblies is their ‘peaceful’ nature, that is: 1) not to be violent, 2) not to be armed, 3) not to pursue illegal goals. Participation in the assembly must be voluntary.
The practice shows that with the adoption of the current law, people began applying its provisions. We can state that since 2012, the citizens of the Kyrgyz Republic increasingly choose non-violent forms of opinion expression and respect the right to hold peaceful assemblies.
For example, the monitoring of peaceful assemblies in 2021 shows that the organisers use the right to submit a notice of an upcoming assembly more often than in 2020, Gulshaiyr Abdirasulova noted.
“However, the latest trends of March-April 2022 show that the authorities see a threat in peaceful assemblies and their participants again; they allow them to hold assemblies in places where no one will see or hear them. Sometimes, there are provocations. This issue is also regulated by the law on peaceful assemblies, which fully gives the internal affairs bodies – the police – the authority to identify such persons and take legal action against them without termination of the peaceful assembly; however, the police officers are completely inactive in such cases,” she said.
Tajikistan: Taboo on Holding Public Rallies
30 years ago, in March-April 1992, Tajikistan (Dushanbe in particular) was called a country of democracy, where different rallies with political and other demands were held almost every week. However, as those rallies led to a civil war, the unspoken taboo appeared in Tajikistan on holding any, even peaceful, rally, according to Rajabi Mirzo.
Although the authorities consider any citizen assembly a threat, the protests were still held in Dushanbe until 2012. However, none of them were political, the media expert noted. After 2012, no large public events were held in Dushanbe.
The last rally in Dushanbe was held in September 2012, when there was a fire in the largest “Korvon” market in Tajikistan. Then, the merchants took to the streets demanding loan and tax exemptions from the authorities.
“There were also some small assemblies but they did not have political demands,” the Tajik expert said.
Rajabi Mirzo spoke about his experience of participating in a rally and the law enforcement agencies’ reaction to it.
“In 2006, we held a picket near the Ministry of Justice; we were detained for 15 days, although it was illegal. The Tajik-language version of the law on assemblies, meetings, and demonstrations did not include a ‘picket’ definition and did not require receiving permission for it from the authorities. However, it was present in the Russian-language version; they used it against us,” said Rajabi Mirzo.
Currently, the country’s authorities tightly control the public rallies in Tajikistan and actively oppose them. The last year’s protests in the Gorno-Badakhshan Autonomous Region prove it.
“We can see that the people who participated in the rallies are having hard times now. Some of them were detained and some were killed. This is the authorities’ reaction. It is very bad when there is no dialogue between the authorities and the population,” said Rajabi Mirzo.
Uzbekistan: Nuances in the Legislation on Holding Peaceful Rallies
Uzbekistan is the only country in Central Asia, where a new procedure for organising and holding meetings, rallies, street marches, and demonstrations has not been adopted since 1988, according to Timur Ismailov.
Article 33 of the Constitution of Uzbekistan guarantees the right to hold meetings, rallies, marches, and demonstrations. In addition, in 1995, Uzbekistan acceded to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which states that the right to peaceful assembly is not subject to any restrictions other than those imposed by law and those necessary for security reasons.
In 2018, Ismailov began organising the annual “Immortal Regiment” march on May 9. He found out that many legal nuances exist in this regard.
“If you organise something, you need to do it legally. It turned out that the legislation does not include requirements for certain procedures. However, the Administrative Responsibility Code and the Criminal Code provide for punishment for violating the non-existent procedures of meetings, rallies, processions, and demonstrations. How can we explain it?” Ismailov asks.
“Does it mean that we can do whatever we want since there are no restrictions? This leads to anarchy, does it not? In my work, it turned out that there are two documents in Uzbekistan, the legal acts of 1992, according to which the Soviet legislation acts, which have not been replaced by new ones and which do not contradict the Constitution of Uzbekistan, continue to be in force. Moreover, it applies to both the USSR laws and by-laws,” said Timur Ismailov.
He noted that until 2019, there were 160 departmental regulatory legal acts of the Soviet times adopted by ministries, departments, and committees in Uzbekistan. The oldest one has been in force since 1954. Their applicability was described by separate resolutions of the President or the Cabinet of Ministers of the country.
“Thus, the Soviet laws of 1988 continue to be in force in our country; however, not all of their provisions but only those that do not contradict the Constitution. Last year, we received the explanatory letter, that is, not an interpretation of the law, but simply its explanation from the Constitutional Court of the Republic of Uzbekistan. Okay, the question arises. Is it necessary to coordinate the procession, meeting, or something else with someone or not?” Ismailov said.
According to him, the problem is also that any citizen’s activity, even such a peaceful campaign dedicated to the memory of those killed in World War II, is anachronistically perceived (as it was in the USSR) as a protest.
According to the old law, this had to be coordinated with the executive committee of the local Council of People’s Deputies – the local authorities.
“There is another question. Now, we live in Uzbekistan. Who is the legal successor of the executive committee or who can be it? There are no such norms in the legislation,” Ismailov continued.
He said that last year, the “Immortal Regiment” march was coordinated with the administration, the khokimiyat of Tashkent. Unfortunately, the khokimiyat of Tashkent did not show any interest in studying the citizens’ requests.
Conclusion
The experts also discussed the impact of social media on freedom of expression, noting that, in general, social media has become a good platform for this. In Tajikistan, for example, people see social media as the only platform where they can express their opinions and find like-minded people.
However, a lot of fake news, disinformation, incitements to hatred and violence are spreading on social media. This causes concern.
“The culture of holding peaceful assemblies is shaped by the culture of the dialogue between citizens and authorities. When there is no such dialogue, when the authorities are afraid of dialogue, and do everything possible not to hear people, the citizens gradually begin to use more violent methods and forms of bringing their demands to the authorities,” said Gulshaiyr Abdirasulova.
Watch the full version of the expert meeting here: