Since early July, interviews with Joanna Lillis, author of Dark Shadows: Inside the Secret World of Kazakhstan, have featured on different web platforms and media outlets. We'll be collecting these interviews together on Dark Shadows KZ to make them easy for you to locate.
The first author interview was conducted with Voices on Central Asia (in English), a platform for scholars, authors and journalists interested in Central Asia, and the Central Asian Analytical Network (in Russian) in July 2018. In August, the Kazakhstan edition of Esquire magazine featured an interview (in Russian) with the author.
Here's an extract from the interview with Voices on Central Asia.
Kazakhstan has a seriously blighted human rights record, and I believe that it has been on a downward spiral in the 13 years that I have lived here. The regime rampantly abuses political and civil liberties. The country has not held a free and fair election in the more than a quarter of a century since independence; elections have become farcical exercises designed to shore up the regime rather than give the people of Kazakhstan a political voice. Nazarbayev last won re-election with 98% of the vote, which reflects not the level of his popularity—although, as I said before, he is genuinely popular—but the fact that there is no opposition to challenge him.
You suggest that Astana may be following its neighbors, but frankly, in my opinion, Kazakhstan is a leader rather than a follower when it comes to human rights abuses. As Dark Shadows illustrates, the authorities have dreamt up all kinds of ways of stamping out dissent, from jailing lone demonstrators staging one-man or one-woman protests to imprisoning people expressing dissent online. This is another reason why I thought it was important to give people a voice through this book: because Astana suppresses dissenting voices and seeks to create the impression that Kazakhstan is a country in which there is only one opinion—the official one. As in any country, this is not the case: people have differing opinions, and they should have the right to express them, as long as they do so peacefully.
The first author interview was conducted with Voices on Central Asia (in English), a platform for scholars, authors and journalists interested in Central Asia, and the Central Asian Analytical Network (in Russian) in July 2018. In August, the Kazakhstan edition of Esquire magazine featured an interview (in Russian) with the author.
Here's an extract from the interview with Voices on Central Asia.
As a journalist who has covered Central Asia, particularly Kazakhstan, for many years, how would you describe Kazakhstan in one sentence if asked by someone in your native country, the United Kingdom, what type of country it is?
It’s hard to sum up a country in a single sentence, but if pushed I would say something like this: Kazakhstan is a country that is complex and compelling, diverse and dazzling, beautiful and blighted, full of bright and courageous people who are shaping a present and future out of a past that is troubled and turbulent.
It’s hard to sum up a country in a single sentence, but if pushed I would say something like this: Kazakhstan is a country that is complex and compelling, diverse and dazzling, beautiful and blighted, full of bright and courageous people who are shaping a present and future out of a past that is troubled and turbulent.
Kazakhstan has been criticized for human rights abuses and pressure on the media in recent years. Is the country following the path of its neighbours in the region?
Kazakhstan has a seriously blighted human rights record, and I believe that it has been on a downward spiral in the 13 years that I have lived here. The regime rampantly abuses political and civil liberties. The country has not held a free and fair election in the more than a quarter of a century since independence; elections have become farcical exercises designed to shore up the regime rather than give the people of Kazakhstan a political voice. Nazarbayev last won re-election with 98% of the vote, which reflects not the level of his popularity—although, as I said before, he is genuinely popular—but the fact that there is no opposition to challenge him.
The authorities tolerate no alternative points of view. They have hounded opposition parties out of existence, closing them down through the courts, harassing and jailing opposition leaders, and generally creating conditions in which it is impossible for political opposition to operate. Independent media are muzzled and squeezed out of existence, and the authorities have a zero-tolerance policy toward peaceful protest.
This has been clearly demonstrated on numerous occasions in recent years, from the mass arrests during protests against land reform in 2016 to recent arrests of protesters demonstrating at the instigation of the exiled oligarch and Nazarbayev foe Mukhtar Ablyazov.
The government’s intolerance of dissent has reached absurd levels; the bottom line is that Astana simply refuses to tolerate anyone expressing a point of view that is different from its own. It basically equates public protest with treachery, and on two occasions in recent years it has painted protests as attempts to topple Nazarbayev: in 2011, when a mishandled oil strike spiraled into deadly violence after security forces opened fire on the crowds, and in 2016, when the land protests were depicted as a nefarious, albeit rather hazy, attempted coup. In both cases, people were jailed on highly spurious charges.
You suggest that Astana may be following its neighbors, but frankly, in my opinion, Kazakhstan is a leader rather than a follower when it comes to human rights abuses. As Dark Shadows illustrates, the authorities have dreamt up all kinds of ways of stamping out dissent, from jailing lone demonstrators staging one-man or one-woman protests to imprisoning people expressing dissent online. This is another reason why I thought it was important to give people a voice through this book: because Astana suppresses dissenting voices and seeks to create the impression that Kazakhstan is a country in which there is only one opinion—the official one. As in any country, this is not the case: people have differing opinions, and they should have the right to express them, as long as they do so peacefully.
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