Kazakhstan’s president, Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, has signed a Russian-style anti-LGBTQ+ propaganda bill into law, with those who violate the legislation set to face fines or detention.
The country’s lower chamber of parliament passed the bill, which bans “information containing propaganda of pedophilia and/or non-traditional sexual orientation in public spaces, as well as in the media”, back in November.
The bill’s passage came despite urgent calls from international rights groups – including Access Now, Civil Rights Defenders, Eurasian Coalition on Health, Rights, Gender and Sexual Diversity, Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights, Human Rights Watch, International Partnership for Human Rights, and the Norwegian Helsinki Committee – for lawmakers to reject the legislation, saying it would “blatantly violate” Kazakhstan’s human rights commitments.
“Adopting an ‘LGBT propaganda ban’ would blatantly violate Kazakhstan’s international human rights commitments, including children’s rights to education, health, and information,” the group of seven organisations said in a statement published on 11 November.
“Discriminatory and rights-violating provisions like those being proposed have no place in any democratic society, which Kazakhstan aspires to be.”
The bill’s second reading was subsequently approved by senators on 18 December and went to Tokayev for signing into law, which he did so on 30 December.
Content that promotes “nontraditional sexual relations and pedophilia” is now officially banned in the country, with those who share it now facing up to 10 days in detention and financial fines of up to 144,500 Kazakh Tenge ($280/£208).
Despite homosexuality being decriminalised in Kazakhstan in 1998, LGBTQ+ rights in the central Asian country – which is an ally of Russia – are dire, with queer people having no protections from employment and housing discrimination, hate crime or conversion therapy. Same-sex marriage is also banned with co-habitation between couples defined as “not be recognised as the marriage (matrimony)” whilst trans people can only access gender-affirming care if they are over the age of 21 and undergo sterilisation.
Many members of the LGBTQ+ community in the country have reported experiencing assaults, threats, blackmail, and extortion at the hands of law enforcement officers, as well as society wide discrimination.
The law is a copycat of Russia’s infamous anti-LGBTQ+ propaganda law from 2013, which has also been copied by several other countries including Georgia and Bulgaria.
Under this law, LGBTQ+ rights have been near totally eroded in Russia and in 2023 the so-called “international LGBT movement” – which does not exist as an organisation – was labelled as “extremist”.
Since then, the propaganda law has seen a man fined for joking he started the LGBTQ+ movement, queer bar staff and venue owners jailed, more than 50 club-goers detained at a club night, language-learning app Duolingo forced to remove its inclusive content, Elton John’s AIDS Foundation banned, children’s cartoon My Little Pony labelled 18+, Roblox banned for “inappropriate content” and a gay student expelled from university for posting make-up videos.
Reports have also arisen of people being thrown into jail for being believed to be involved with the LGBTQ+ community, held in abhorrent conditions and dying whilst in custody.
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