This week our new Russian-language Neweurasia Kazakhstan blog covered various topics pertinent to life in Kazakhstan, from space ships and OSCE chairmanship to Kazakh art, which made its way to British audience.

On 13 June Adam Kesher, who has his LiveJournal that combines politics, funny stories and photos from Kazakhstan, criticized the price policies of “Kazakhtelecom”, the monopolist company in telecommunications in Kazakhstan. Adam compares the Kazakh prices, due to be lowered, to Russian ones: one minute on Russian mobile costs ~ 14,3 cents, and one minute on Kazakh mobile - 32, 3 cents.

Our contributor Dmitry covered the new development in Kazakh space industry. He wrote that Kazakhstan launches its own satellites, plans to launch more with Russia and France, and lately, it opens the program for foreign workers in space industry in Kazakhstan. Dmitry notes that this is the right step for Kazakhstan on the way to become a space power: foreign workers, who, most probably, will come from Russia, will train a new generation of Kazakh specialists. The full post translated to English is also published on our English-language Kazakhstan blog.

On June 13 I wrote about Kazakh modern art and that it can be quite shocking at times. The UK channel More4 featured a program where art critic of Times travels around Kazakhstan and discovers exotic and weird Kazakh art: a soldier making love on a galloping horse, naked women dancing in a snow, and a man having his face slapped among other strange things. I mentioned a couple of other projects, which also show “wild Asia”, to the astonishment of foreigners. English version - here.

On June 16 Adam Kesher updated on the trial in Sarsenbayev’s case. He said that the official explanation of the decision to conduct the trial in Taldy-Korgan instead of Almaty was that the murder happened outside Almaty, not in it. However, says Adam, since the victims were kidnapped in Almaty, the trial should have been conducted in Almaty, according to the law. Aldiyar, our new contributor, who had his blog on election monitoring in Kazakhstan, shared that members of opposition and relatives of Altynbek Sarsenbayev accused the authorities of trying to keep the case away from public view in fear of public protests. The most shocking news of the trial is that Utembayev denies his guilt, which contrasts the earlier news that he fully admitted to the crime.

In his second post Adam informed that the OSCE held a conference on religious and ethnic tolerance in Almaty. Adam says that, while traditional religions are respected in Kazakhstan, new religions and religious movements, such as Baptists and Krishna Concsiousness Society face hardships and even persecutions.

The issue of Kazakhstan’s chairmanship in OSCE is raised by Adam Kesher again. He cites EU’s note on Kazakhstan political and economic situation, noting Nazarbayev’s strategy to limit opposition and democratic freedoms. International Helsinki Federation for Human Rights appealed to OSCE to watch closely the human rights record of a country hoping for its leadership. However, OSCE itself believes Kazakhstan has strong chances to become a chairman, which Adam Kesher denounces as a compromise of human rights for the stability of the region. He concludes that the West’s acceptance of “half-democracies” for the sake of security and access to oil endangers both in the end.

In my last post this week, I discuss the situation with “oralmans”, ethnic Kazakhs who return to Kazakhstan within the Government program. Along with numerous social problems they face (language barrier, poor education, difficult access to work and administrative resources), they also risk to become isolated communities in their own country. Their wish to try the criminal according to the Shariah law is quite discomforting for me and it also says that there might be more problems in the future if there is no work on their integration done.