On a grey afternoon in early November, three activists gathered in a conference room in Almaty to warn of a catastrophe approaching in the form of legislation.
Russian President Vladimir Putin welcomed his Kazakh counterpart Nursultan Nazarbayev in the Kremlin in Moscow, on Dec. 19, 2012. (Maxim Shemetov/AFP/Getty Images). Nursultan Nazarbayev (former President) is considered the architect of all the anti-LGBT movements.You can simply scroll past—but please don't overlook the importance of an independent queer press.
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You can simply scroll past — but please don’t overlook the importance of an independent queer press.
You can simply scroll past—but please don't overlook the importance of an independent queer press.
Time is now or never.
Queer voices disappear without independent journalism to amplify them.
We document what others won't touch.
We hold power to account when it threatens our communities.
This work exists only because you choose to fund it directly.
Donate over €25/month and receive our limited-edition tote bag — a badge of resistance, a statement that you stand for fearless journalism.
We are grateful!
Can't donate? Sharing our work helps more than you think
Ardzh Tursynkan, a political scientist turned activist, spoke with the measured urgency of someone watching a storm materialise on the horizon. The proposed law banning “LGBT propaganda,” he explained, could punish people for everything—jokes, drawings, embraces between friends.
Beside him sat Zhanar Sekerbaeva, co-founder of Feminita, a collective defending queer women’s rights that Kazakhstan’s government has refused to register for years. She called the bill colonial mimicry of Russian legislation, asking whether Kazakhstan was “an independent and sovereign republic, or a colony of the Russian Federation”. Temirlan Baimash, co-founder of QueerKZ, completed the trio, each of them representing organisations that had fought for years to carve out space for dignity in a country where, according to government research, homophobia runs deep.
Their warnings went unheeded. On 12 November, the lower house of parliament voted unanimously in favour of the ban, a law modelled after similar legislation in Russia, Georgia, and Hungary. The bill prescribes fines and imprisonment of up to 10 days for repeat violations, though the exact penalties remain disputed. President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, whose signature is necessary for the bill to become law, has repeatedly stressed the need to uphold “traditional values”.
During parliamentary debates, the rhetoric took a predictable turn. So-called LGBT propaganda was framed as a threat to children, something that needed to be extinguished to protect Kazakh youth. Nabi Esimov, deputy director of the Practical Centre for Mental Health at the Ministry of Health, claimed that comprehensive LGBT propaganda could exacerbate mental disorders in minors predisposed to such conditions—assertions presented without supporting evidence.
UN experts warned that the bill was based on disinformation, spuriously equating non-traditional sexual orientation with paedophilia, an offensive conflation that appeared throughout the legislative text. Seven international human rights organisations, including Human Rights Watch and the International Partnership for Human Rights, urged parliament to reject the amendments, arguing they would violate Kazakhstan’s commitments under international law.
But the activists found themselves subject to the law’s spirit before its letter was written. On 21 November, just nine days after parliament’s vote, Tursynkan, Sekerbaeva, and others convened for a roundtable discussion on discrimination against minorities. They had scarcely begun presenting their research when Ziuar Zhumanova, a conservative activist, began interrupting repeatedly, her interjections escalating until the event collapsed prematurely.
Police attended the event, but their intervention took an unexpected form. Rather than removing Zhumanova, they detained Tursynkan—for petty hooliganism, after he raised his voice at his interrupter. The irony was not subtle: those warning about repression were being punished for resisting it.
The following day brought an almost theatrical repetition. Zhumanova returned, this time accompanied by several other women, confronting activists gathered at a café in Astana, the capital. Police arrived with remarkable swiftness, detaining Baimash on the same charges that had been levelled against Tursynkan. When the remaining activists relocated to another café, hoping to continue their conversation, officers followed. Sekerbaeva attempted to flee, running into a nearby shop. Police pursued her inside and detained her there as well, again citing petty hooliganism.
All three were subsequently released, though with fines pending and court dates shrouded in uncertainty. The charges themselves seemed almost beside the point—the message had been delivered with clarity. Advocacy would be met with harassment, organisation with detention.
Then came the final silencing. Sekerbaeva had been scheduled to deliver a TEDx talk at KIMEP University in Almaty on 26 November, her topic titled “Crossroads of Women’s Future: Leading the Path to Change.” On the day of the talk, organisers cancelled it. According to Sekerbaeva, the city administration had contacted them directly. The organisers offered a different explanation, claiming her chosen topic violated university policy restrictions—a vague formulation that left unstated precisely which policy, or which aspect of women’s futures, had become forbidden.
The law still awaits Senate approval and presidential signature, expected within months. What will constitute “propaganda” remains undefined, to be determined only when Tokayev affixes his name to the legislation. But for those already detained, already cancelled, already silenced, the definitions hardly matter. The apparatus of repression has learned to operate without the formality of actual laws. The storm Tursynkan saw approaching has already arrived, bringing with it not thunder but the quiet, methodical work of erasure.
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