Kazakhstan - News about well-known Front line defender Vadim Kuramshin

Kazakhstan. Human rights lawyer Vadim Kuramshin is awarded with the Ludovic-Traireux prize 2013. He is a Front line defender.
новости:


Preparation of a provocation against human rights defender Vadim Kuramshin:
http://www.elbacity.press/news/309-rukami-chlenov-npm-verstanova-i-nistoliy-gotovitsya-provokaciya-protiv-kuramshina.html




Front line defenders: 
https://www.frontlinedefenders.org/en/profile/vadim-kuramshin



Old summary (Campaign Kazakhstan January 2013):

"Vadim was first arrested at the beginning of 2012 after he attempted to expose corruption at the Kordai border crossing in Southern Kazakhstan. Kept in prison for 7 months he was eventually found innocent by a jury of all the serious charges against him and released. He was again arrested in early December and this time taken to a court with no jury, where, in breach of many of the court’s own procedures, Vadim was pronounced guilty and sent to prison for 12 years on the same charges on which  he had first been acquitted.

Vadim has proved to be a fierce opponent of the current regime in Kazakhstan. Working as a journalist he originally exposed a case of corruption during the privatization process in his home region of Petropavlovsk in northern Kazakhstan. For this crime he was sent to prison for several years. During his imprisonment he suffered brutal torture at the hands of prison guards and trustee prisoners. On his release he became an effective campaigner for the rights of prisoners and in particular against the use of violence and torture in the country’s prisons.  In doing so he often found himself in conflict with the official human rights structures which, living on grants from international bodies, have found themselves losing the ability to sharply criticize the regime for fear of upsetting the cosy relationship they had built up with the regime.

The regime has good reason to fear Vadim Kuramshin’s campaigning against corruption. The Kordai customs post is not any old border crossing located in an inaccessible part of the world. It is located on one of the main gateways on the notorious drug routes from Afghanistan and Central Asia into Russia and the European Union. Kordai in the Zhambyl region is just 300 kilometres across Kirghizia and Tadzhikistan from the northern regions of Afghanistan and Pakistan. According to the UN Office on Drugs and Crime in their report of May 2012, three of the main drug routes go through the bottleneck of Kordai. In the same report, the UNODC comments that there is a low rate of uncovering drug trafficking in Kazakhstan as a whole and another report points out that the worst record within Kazakhstan is held by the Zhambyl region, in which Kordai is located. Along with drugs, this route is also increasingly popular with arms and people smugglers. The easiest way to get these smuggled goods through Kordai is to pay bribes.

At a meeting of the OSCE “Human Dimensions Conference” in Warsaw at the end of October Vadim Kuramshin spoke about this “Window on Europe” located in Kordai and about how it was being used by criminal gangs. During this conference, the official representative of Kazakhstan assured Vadim that the government had no intention of taking further action against him and that it was perfectly safe for him to return to Kazakhstan. Despite this promise,  just a few weeks later riot police broke down the door of his home in Petropavlovsk and, without a warrant, arrested Vadim and sent him south for a new trial.

It is clear that the regime simply wants to put Vadim away so that he can no longer play a role in uncovering the corrupt officials who allow the drugs, arms and people to be transported illegally through the region. That is why Vadim is unlikely to get a fair hearing during his appeal.

On arriving in the regional capital Taraz on 24th December, Vadim’s lawyer Raziya Nurmasheva was shocked to discover that that the judge who had sentenced Vadim to 12 years in prison, N.M. Abidov had issued an order banning her from representing Vadim or for acting as a witness in his defence.

The College of Advocates to which Raziya Nurmasheva belongs is equally shocked. This is the first time that such an action has been taken in Kazakhstan. Since then the situation has only become worse. Vadim reports that the KNB are demonstrating intense activity around his case making him worry that they will attempt to use other methods of getting rid of him. Now judge Abidov has announced that he wants the licenses of Raziya Nurmasheva and Iskander Alimbayev to act as advocates revoked."