Kazakhstan cracks down on press freedom

For Respublika it has been a long battle for survival. In September bailiffs seized the opposition newspaper's entire print run. Working through the night, reporters retrieved the proofs from a USB flash disk, photocopied them, and stapled them together. By 7am they had churned out 2,000 homemade copies–not exactly a big edition, but a small symbolic victory in the struggle for media freedom in Kazakhstan. Respublika's long-running scrap with officialdom isn't unusual for Central Asia, a region not known for its pluralism. What makes it extraordinary is that Kazakhstan is about to assume the chairmanship of the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), the Vienna-based body devoted to democracy and press freedom. On 1 January, Kazakhstan will become the first post-Soviet country to lead the organisation of 56 countries. Since 2007, when member states voted it OSCE chair, Kazakhstan's own record on press freedom has worsened.