On August 19, 2021, the court of the Auezov district of Almaty, Kazakhstan, sentenced human rights defender and blogger Ermek Taychibekov to seven years in prison.

The reason for the criminal prosecution was an interview given to the Ukraina.ru portal, in which the public figure criticized the Russophobic policy of the Kazakh authorities and mentioned the attack of Kazakh nationalists on the Dungan village in February 2020.

Then ten people died at the hands of radicals, more than a hundred were injured.

From the pre-trial detention center in Alma-Ata, Ermek Taychibekov answered RT questions, which were given to him by lawyer Galym Nurpeisov. 

- The linguistic expertise of the published interviews was used as evidence of accusations of inciting ethnic hatred using the media.

How do you assess such expert conclusions?

- There are no calls to violence in my interviews.

I did not condone violent action against anyone.

He did not threaten or insult anyone.

I was brought to criminal responsibility not according to the law, but according to lawlessness.

- Were you warned that you would be prosecuted for such statements?

- I learned that a criminal case was opened against me only on September 23, 2020, at the time of my arrest.

- Did you assume that your position could become a reason for persecution?

After all, you have often criticized the authorities for unacceptable national policies before.

- I'm not an extremist.

I did not call for violence.

Unlike 500 thousand Kazakh Nazis, who in February 2020 called for the murder of the Dungans.

- Do you have followers in Kazakhstan?

Are there many people who share your point of view, or more than those who criticize you?

- It's not the people who are against me, but the National Security Committee.

- Some Kazakh media write that you are allegedly connected with Russian law enforcement agencies.

Others, on the contrary, call you a project of the Kazakhstani Security Committee ...

- It is a scandalous technique to call someone a KNB or FSB project.

The KNB offered me cooperation for $ 3 thousand a month in 2015.

I refused.

They put me in jail, now they put me in jail and no longer offer cooperation.

- Are you considering the possibility of leaving Kazakhstan for good, if there is such an opportunity?

- I'm knocking on all doors.

I am in prison for absolutely no reason, just like that, for the second time.

There is no crime in my actions.

I see no protection for myself here in Kazakhstan.

Taychibekov's lawyer Galym Nurpeisov also told RT what help the convict hopes for from Russia.

- Has your client turned to the Russian authorities with a request to grant him political asylum? 

- Yermek would like to receive political asylum.

And he really would like to obtain Russian citizenship and leave Kazakhstan, because this is the second criminal case under the same article, where there is no corpus delicti, corpus delicti.

I declare this as a lawyer who is familiar with all the nuances and cases in the materials of the criminal case.

But according to the law on citizenship of the Russian Federation, while a person is convicted, he cannot resolve these issues.

- What were the violations on the part of the investigation from the moment of the initiation of the criminal case to the announcement of the verdict?

- Great amount.

Ermek remained without a lawyer for quite a long time.

I was not allowed to this case, and later I was forbidden to visit Ermek in the pre-trial detention center.

I had to appeal through the court against the actions of the investigator and declare it illegal.

- What violations do you see in the work of linguistic expertise?

- The experts could not even answer what the general semantic load of this text is.

This is an interview.

What an interview is - is the definition of an opinion and the expression of your belief.

And there is no such thing as a criminal opinion.

There is a criminal act or omission.

- How often people in Kazakhstan are condemned under Article 174 (incitement of social, national, tribal, racial, class or religious hatred)?

- This article is very versatile.

The bulk of the people on it were involved in inciting religious hatred.

Last year I had my first case of inciting class hatred.

To incite ethnic hatred, like Yermek's, earlier cases were rarely initiated in our country, because Kazakhstan positioned itself as a multinational state.

To comply with this principle, we tried to avoid applying just such a legal norm as much as possible.