In Kazakhstan, the number of cases of cyberbullying against children is rising, yet most parents do not report them to police.
Ainash Karsakova lives in Almaty and raises three children. Six mongs ago, her youngest daughter moved to another school and one week later she was exposed to cyberbullying on social media. Now she refuses to attend classes.
“My daughter is overweight. When she changed school, she followed her classmates on Instagram. They started posting nasty things under her photos. We don’t have money to buy branded clothing. But children do not understand it,” Karsakova said.
Amir Zhumanov is 9 years old and he recently created an account on VKontakte. According to him, he wanted to tell about his family and relatives on his page. But after a while, high school students began to offend him.
“I had to delete my profile afterwards. And my friend was humiliated because of his short height. He even has a nickname, and he always weeps in the toilet room because people write bad things about him on social media,” the pupil said.
Amir’s parents turned to the support service and to psychologist, to no avail so far.
“My peers used to beat me at school, but they never called me names, never humiliated me. My son has become reticent, aggressive, started to raise his hand against his sisters. I am very concerned about him,” his father Marlen Zhumanov said.
Biology teacher based in Akmola region Karlygash Zhaksylyk said that pupils used to write bad words on walls, and now they do it on social media.
“We have had a situation at our school: fifth graders were playing football and one of the boys couldn’t do well. The losing team saw the reason of their failure in this child. He was blamed, mocked for not playing well. Then he received comments affecting his honour and dignity on his social media accounts. Eventually, the boy said to his parents that he didn’t want to attend school and he was severely depressed,” she said.
The main types of cyberbullying are:
Unjustified criticism against a particular person, takes the form of comments and messages.
Deriding and humiliation of a victim in aggressive messages posted on various websites and social media accounts.
The use of gadgets to stalk a person. Regular threats against the victim or their family members.
Sending or publishing photos and videos of naked and semi-naked people. Usually used for blackmailing, extortion or revenge on an ex-partner.
Used in multiplayer online games and is a harassment of other players. Griefers use coarse language, lock particular parts of the game, and cheat openly to spoil the fun.
Every ninth child
According to Sauytbek Abdrakhmanov, deputy of the lower house of parliament of Kazakhstan, 140 thousand facts of cyberbullying were identified in 2021 in the country. This is twice as much as in 2020. According to his information voiced at the plenary session, every ninth pupil in the country faces bullying at least once.
“In Kazakhstan, parents give their children aged 3 smartphones as gifts. 54 per cent of children at the age of 4-6 have their own phone or tablet PC, and this number reaches 97 per cent by the age of 14,” he said.
According to Akbota Abildina, head of the health promotion and youth department of the National Centre for Public Health, they surveyed 6,546 pupils of mainstream schools aged 11-15 years old in 2021.
“According to the survey, 5 per cent have been cyberbullied two or three times. And this figure tends to grow with age among boys,” she said.
The cyberbullying issue in Kazakhstan is not denied; however, many people refuse to speak publicly about their cases. From March 2021 to March 2022, the ministry of information and social development registered 1,700 complaints about cyberbullying, mainly from parents. Moreover, 45 thousand illegal links are investigated for alleged cyberbullying. However, this is only a minor part of real cases.
According to Shavkat Sabirov, president of Internet Association of Kazakhstan, 99 per cent of parents, whose children have been exposed to cyberbullying, do not want to report to the police.
“We could have a million of articles in the criminal code, but as long as people do not trust the law enforcement bodies, the problem will not be tackled. Trust can be built by training our own cyber police. In western countries, cyber police is made mainly of cybersecurity and IT specialists, who want to be police officers. We have a different situation here, I think,” Sabirov said.
Yermek Shulden, head of the Investigation Department of the Ministry of Interior Affairs, many cyberbullies focus on children. They fool them into sending them nude videos or pictures of themselves, and then blackmail them.
“Those children who cannot bear this pressure and find themselves in such a hopeless situation are more likely to commit suicide. I have had a similar case in my practice. An 8-year-old girl met a peer girl on social media, who talked her into posting nude videos and pictures of her on social media. In fact, it was a child molester registered under a different name,” Shulden said.
The law of Kazakhstan does not have the definition of “cyberbullying”, yet it provides for administrative and criminal penalty for actions that fall under this type of mental violence. However, such cases are often considered as administrative ones and only a few of complaints go to court and judgments are passed literally to tens of them.
“The judicial practice is very bad. They cannot protect ordinary people. They may punish for insulting such public officials as the president or a deputy to up to three years in prison. But they cannot help ordinary people,” lawyer Tair Nazkhanov said.
There are laws protecting children from social media pressure in 21 countries of the world. For example, South Korea has had a special law against online harassment since 2007. The law on cyberbullying was adopted by France in 2014, and by Germany in 2017.
Censorship or protection?
Now the parliament of Kazakhstan is reviewing amendments and modifications to laws to ensure children’s rights protection. 59 amendments are planned to be made to various national laws, including the laws on informational support and communication. These laws bind foreign social media and messengers to register in the territory of the country, otherwise they would be blocked.
“We can prevent numerous cases of cyberbullying by restricting access to social media. Currently, we are holding talks with Meta office about removing materials that do not comply with our national laws within 24 hours. This law was adopted on September 15, 2021. In other words, we will open Kazakhstan-based offices for Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, messengers led by our Kazakhstan specialists,” Aidos Sarym, deputy of the lower house of parliament, said.
The amendments were approved on first reading so far. Many people fear that the authorities will control citizens on social media and block unwanted content under the guise of fight against cyberbullying.
Public activists of Kazakhstan call for increased monitoring of groups, internet pages and messengers, holding classes on cyberbullying consequences at schools and educational institutions. Another problem is that the country lacks child psychologists at schools across the country. It is impossible to prevent online harassment of children without them, according to psychologist Zhannur Daurenbekova.
“In Kazakhstan, there is one school psychologist per 2,000 children, whereas in Europe there is 1 psychologist per 200 children. There are specialists who work as psychologists in two schools. But the quality of psychologists is very poor,” she said.
According to her, good specialists do not want to work at schools because of high workloads and low pays, and prefer to work in private centres or open their own offices instead.
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