Kazakhstan fighting against separatism: Blogger gets suspended sentence for calls to join Russia
Almaty court has charged blogger Tatyana Valova-Shevtsova with a four-year suspended sentence with a three-year probation period.
The woman, who is ethnic Russian, abused Kazakhs in social media calling them ‘churkas’ [chinks – Belsat]. She urged Kazakhstan to accede to Russia ‘by the example of Crimea’.
“If you make the same dog’s dinner [bad language in the original post – Belsat] of [your] language and praise your nation here, in Kazakhstan, you’ll face the same things that happened to Crimea – your northern regions, and probably all other parts will move to Russia, and not by any annexation, as are you shouting at all corners, but by referendum, as it was in Crimea”, she wrote on Facebook.
Now the blogger is forbidden to leave the country, move house and switch jobs without notifying the authorities.
The northern regions of the country are home to many ethnic Russians. For example, in Petropavlovsk and Kostanay Russians make up for 63.67% and 46.71% of all residents respectively.
The Kazakh authorities have become concerned over the annexation of Crimea. Amid the Kremlin’s aggression in Ukraine, president Nursultan Nazarbayev decided to tighten the law on separatism.
A person accused of any unconstitutional change of the territorial integrity of the country may face up to seven years in prison.
In addition, the authorities started to open departments of ‘promotion of inter-ethnic harmony’ in higher educational institutions in order to ‘save students from separatism’.
It is to be recalled that Belarusian president Alyaksandr Lukashenka, one of Putin‘s allies, stressed at a press conference in January, 2015: “If one believes that Belarus is part of some ‘Russian world’ – you will see it only in your dreams!”
