Kazakhstan - The Times Of Central Asia

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Sexual Violence

Kazakh Women Share Stories of Sexual Violence Under #IAmJaneDoe Hashtag

Women in Kazakhstan have joined the international #IAmJaneDoe social media campaign, sharing accounts of sexual violence they experienced as children and teenagers. The posts include allegations of abuse by relatives, acquaintances, and strangers. Many participants say they remained silent because they feared being judged and did not trust law enforcement authorities. Denis Dzhivaga, director of the Kazakhstan International Bureau for Human Rights and Rule of Law, told The Times of Central Asia why speaking out publicly sometimes becomes the only way for survivors to draw attention to their experiences, despite tougher legislation. How #IAmJaneDoe Began The international #IAmJaneDoe campaign emerged amid a case involving a former student at Cornell University in the United States. In September 2026, a woman identified in court documents by the pseudonym Jane Doe filed a civil lawsuit against seven former members of the Chi Phi fraternity, the university, and other defendants. According to the plaintiff, she was subjected to a gang sexual assault in October 2024. The initial investigation ended without criminal charges being filed. After the lawsuit was brought, prosecutors reopened the investigation, and New York Governor Kathy Hochul appointed state Attorney General Letitia James as special prosecutor. No criminal charges have been filed, and the seven men deny wrongdoing. Women in different countries began posting under #IAmJaneDoe in an effort to frustrate attempts to reveal the plaintiff's identity. Through these posts, they express solidarity with the plaintiff and share their own experiences of violence. In Kazakhstan, the campaign has brought attention to the silence surrounding sexual abuse within families. In their accounts, women describe incidents dating back many years, including alleged crimes committed by fathers, stepfathers, and brothers. Dzhivaga believes that the decision to share such experiences publicly is often linked to a lack of effective support. “From families that try to cover up cases of abuse to police officers who still prefer not to interfere in family matters, everything pushes women to at least tell their stories publicly. Quite often, women simply have no other options,” he said. However, speaking out does not guarantee sympathy. According to the human rights advocate, women who share their experiences face blame and condemnation, including from other women. What Has Changed Under the ‘Saltanat Law’? In June 2024, amendments informally known as the “Saltanat Law” came into force in Kazakhstan. They were adopted following the murder of Saltanat Nukenova, a case that sparked widespread public outrage. Former Minister of National Economy Kuandyk Bishimbayev was sentenced to 24 years in prison for her murder. The amendments reinstated criminal penalties for battery and intentional infliction of minor bodily harm, strengthened protections for women and children, and expanded measures aimed at preventing violence. However, Dzhivaga argues that the legislative changes have not yet produced comparable improvements in how government agencies respond. “When everyone was celebrating the adoption of the law, I said that passing a law is only half the battle. What matters is how it is enforced. The law has to work, but in many respects, the response...

Tselinny Center

Tselliny HIMOYA Exhibition: Women’s Memory, Protective Amulets, and Colonial Legacies

Kazakh protective amulets incorporating family photographs are among the works on display at HIMOYA: Matrilineal Energies, Oracular Kin at the Tselinny Center of Contemporary Culture in Almaty. Elsewhere, a pregnant bird-woman stands at the boundary between life and death. Artists from Central Asia and beyond explore how inherited beliefs and women’s experiences help preserve cultural identity. The exhibition opened on October 15, 2026, and runs through April 4, 2027. It features more than 20 artists and is curated by Natasha Ginwala, who has previously worked on international projects, including the Gwangju and Sharjah biennials. [caption id="attachment_59058" align="aligncenter" width="682"] From Natasha Ginwala’s personal archive.[/caption] The title HIMOYA evokes protection across several linguistic traditions. In the participating artists’ works, that includes preserving ancestral memory. Speaking at the center, Alima Kairat, Tselinny’s artistic director, said the exhibition’s concept had developed over several years. “For Tselinny, HIMOYA is the culmination of a conversation that began in 2021. We gradually explored questions of maternal memory, rituals, protection, inherited ideas about shame, and care. These themes are deeply rooted in life in Kazakhstan and Central Asia, where ancestral knowledge continues to influence the present and helps us imagine the future in new ways,” she said. Female Figures and Ancestral Memory Ginwala’s curatorial concept centers on women’s experiences and knowledge passed down through generations. The artists draw on folk narratives and religious practices, including pre-Islamic steppe beliefs, to reconsider ideas about women’s roles and power. “During conversations with the artists as we prepared the project, different female figures emerged – nurturing and powerful figures, as well as ‘monstrous’ beings from folk tales, steppe mythology, and pre-Islamic cosmologies,” Ginwala said. In Kazakh tradition, genealogy is closely linked to the concept of zheti ata, the knowledge of seven generations of ancestors on the paternal side. The custom also served as the basis for prohibitions on marriage between close relatives. HIMOYA turns to another line of inheritance: the maternal one. The grandmother holds a particularly important place as a guardian of family memory. This theme intersects with the history of colonial and Soviet pressure on local beliefs. The artists explore how traditions once dismissed as backward or superstitious have survived through family practices and acquired new meanings in contemporary art. The Bird-Woman Between Two Worlds One of the exhibition’s central works is Gatekeeper by Rajni Perera, an artist born in Sri Lanka and based in Toronto. Her work draws on South Asian folklore and fantasy to explore migration and motherhood, including questions of reproductive rights. [caption id="attachment_59059" align="aligncenter" width="1024"] “Gatekeeper” by Rajni Perera. Image: Theo Frost.[/caption] The life-size sculpture was first presented at the 2025 Sharjah Biennial in the United Arab Emirates. It depicts a pregnant woman with features of a hornbill and a crow. Its surface is decorated with motifs inspired by azulejos, painted ceramic tiles widely associated with Portugal and shaped by Islamic decorative traditions. “When I was creating this figure, I was thinking about the umbilical cord because she is pregnant. She seems to pull life out...

Logistics

Kazakhstan and China Plan Cross-Border Driverless Truck Trials

Driverless trucks could eventually carry freight between Kazakhstan and China, with the two countries planning to test them on international routes. The Kazakhstan Road Research Institute (KazdorNII) and Chinese technology company China TransInfo Group signed an agreement in Astana on October 16 to develop the trials and establish a joint center for autonomous transport. The partners plan to establish a testing ground and introduce systems that can weigh trucks while they are moving. They are also considering a joint center to coordinate transport operations and share data. KazdorNII will work to adapt the Chinese company's technologies to Kazakhstan's roads and technical requirements. At the NEW SILK WAY transport forum in Astana, China TransInfo Group signed a separate memorandum with Kazakhstan's Ministry of Transport on cooperation in autonomous vehicle technologies. Kazakhstan has already conducted a similar trial with Russia. In May 2026, two Russian-made KamAZ trucks traveled in opposite directions between Astana and Moscow, crossing the international border. However, only parts of the roughly 3,000-kilometer journey were completed autonomously. Kazakhstan and China also launched the Smart Customs project at the Bakhty–Pokitu border crossing in 2025, with plans to use driverless electric shuttles to transport cargo between the two countries. The new initiative envisages testing autonomous trucks on an international road route rather than limiting their operation to border infrastructure. Separately, Kazakhstan plans to begin producing Chinese SITRAK autonomous semi-trucks by 2028, as The Times of Central Asia previously reported.

Russia's War in Ukraine

Ukraine Says More Than 20,400 Central Asians Signed Russian Army Contracts

More than 20,400 Central Asian citizens have signed contracts with Russia’s armed forces since its full-scale invasion of Ukraine began, according to the Ukrainian government’s “I Want to Live” project. The new figures come as families in Kazakhstan secure the return of young men who say they went to Russia for civilian work and were forced into military service. The project’s October figures identify 8,207 Uzbek citizens and 5,308 Tajiks, together accounting for about two-thirds of the regional total. Kazakhstan accounts for 3,819. A further 2,219 are from Kyrgyzstan, and 884 from Turkmenistan. The count covers identified contract signers as of October 1, rather than the number currently fighting, and excludes ethnic Central Asians with Russian citizenship. The figures have not been independently verified. “I Want to Live” is a Ukrainian state project that helps Russian servicemen surrender. For some Kazakh families, the immediate struggle has been to get their sons out of the Russian army. Twenty-year-old Ainabek Keldibek went to Russia expecting to work as a security guard. As TCA reported, he and other young Kazakh men later appeared in appeals for help, with some wearing Russian uniforms in or near the combat zone. On October 7, relatives went to Kazakhstan’s Foreign Ministry in Astana to demand help bringing the men home. Lawyer Meirman Shekeyev, who accompanied them, said he knew of at least 21 cases. Families said their relatives had accepted civilian jobs before being pressured to sign military contracts. Keldibek has now returned to Kazakhstan. His sister told RFE/RL’s Kazakh service that he arrived in Shymkent on the evening of October 21. She said others were still waiting to return. Kazakhstan’s Foreign Ministry had earlier asked Moscow to help repatriate the men and opened a hotline for their families. Their accounts fit a pattern documented by the International Federation for Human Rights. Its April study found that migrants in Russia had been offered military contracts as an alternative to detention or deportation. Others were recruited abroad with promises of civilian work, only to find themselves sent to the front. “Many of these men knew in some capacity what they were signing up for. But some were also deceived or coerced,” FIDH President Alexis Deswaef said. The war has also drawn Central Asians to Ukraine’s defense. TCA’s earlier reporting on both sides described volunteers who regarded Ukraine as home and saw Russia’s invasion as a threat to their families. Kazakh national Zhasulan Duysembin joined Ukraine’s armed forces in 2021 after settling there. In a 2022 interview, he told Ukrainska Pravda: “I had two children in Ukraine, and for the first time I started to think that they might be in danger.” Uzbekistan’s Migration Agency has warned citizens that offers of work or help with immigration papers can lead to recruitment into armed conflicts. It has also reminded them that joining foreign armed forces can bring criminal liability at home. For other families, there has been no homecoming. Kiril Nysanbaev went to Russia for work after completing his military...

Public Service

Opinion: I Spent 15 Years in Government. Here Is What the State Can Learn Next

Zhandos Sabit spent more than 15 years in Kazakhstan’s public service, including the Ministry of National Economy, a regional akimat, and the Prosecutor General’s Office. He now works in the private sector. In March 2014, I went to a meeting in Astana on the development of the machine-building industry. It was held at the then Ministry of Industry and New Technologies. Officials from central and local bodies came, along with the National Chamber of Entrepreneurs and several business owners. I was there as a representative of a state body. When the entrepreneurs began to talk about problems in the industry that we had never heard of, and about how to solve them, I was surprised. They were asking how to increase local content. We were asking whether a proposal complied with current legislation. It turned out that we civil servants knew the resolutions and laws of the sector, and not much beyond that. We sat at one table and spoke about different things. I have seen the same in other sectors since. My former colleagues may take offense, but I will say what I think: many civil servants, myself included in those years, were lawyers and bureaucrats first. That is how the system trains us. Faced with a problem, the first question is whether an idea contradicts the law, and only rarely whether the idea works. Nobody can be blamed for this, because the rules are what an official is held responsible for. It does mean that civil servants should lean on people who know a sector from the inside and take their suggestions seriously. I saw another side of this when I worked in a regional akimat. We prepared a road map for developing the communications sector in the region and agreed it with the central body. Wherever an item needed a decision from the center or money from the republican budget, the central body either struck it out or rewrote it as “study the issue”, with “provide information” as the expected result. I understand why: the center answers for the budget and for every precedent it sets. But how long can an issue be studied? Colleagues in the region put it bluntly: go and fight for the money from the republican budget yourselves. An idea can sit for years between two levels of government, and nobody has done anything wrong. Kazakhstan’s “Listening State” concept raises a question: what happens to what the state hears? I spent more than 15 years in public service, and my proposal comes from that work. Kazakhstan already has channels for individual appeals, and eOtinish is one of them. They are there to answer a person. My proposal is the next step: a platform for solving problems that keep coming back. Its unit would be a problem together with a proposed solution, not a letter. Appeals, petitions, input from business associations, and regional statistics are kept in separate places today, and an AI-assisted system could read them together. If dozens of complaints about delayed...

Regional Cooperation

Opinion: China’s Regional Strategy Meets Central Asia’s National Bargains

The China-Kyrgyzstan-Uzbekistan railway spent decades on the drawing board. Disagreements over its route and financing held it up long after the three governments endorsed the project. In 2024, a Kyrgyz parliamentarian asked railway officials a simple question: “Where will we find $1 billion?” A financing agreement signed in Bishkek on December 16, 2025, cleared a major obstacle. The railway is estimated to cost $4.7 billion. Chinese banks will lend about $2.3 billion to the joint project company over 35 years. China holds 51% of the company, while Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan each hold 24.5%. The partners will provide the remaining funding as equity. In June 2026, Kyrgyzstan’s parliament approved in the first reading a separate $304.5 million loan from China’s Export-Import Bank to help fund its own contribution. That loan has a 25-year term. The joint company’s debt and Kyrgyzstan’s borrowing for its stake are different obligations, but both affect how much value the country will need to earn from the line. Kyrgyzstan wants business around the railway, including terminals and freight services; Uzbekistan gains a direct rail link toward China, while Beijing gains another route west. The governments agreed to build the line, but tariffs and terminal operations will help decide how the returns are shared. The same division between shared goals and separate deals runs through China’s C+C5 relationship with the five Central Asian states. At the second China-Central Asia summit in Astana in June 2025, the six countries signed a treaty on eternal good-neighborliness. The Chinese Foreign Ministry also published a list of 55 cooperation documents. The first 14 cover the regional China-Central Asia framework. The other 41 involve Chinese institutions and counterparts in individual Central Asian countries, including local authorities and companies. The count reflects how the agreements are organized rather than their financial weight. The regional documents cover road permits, customs procedures and green minerals. The country-specific agreements extend into particular industries and investment relationships. Customs cooperation shows how regional talks can lead to bilateral action. At a meeting on May 21–22, 2025, customs chiefs from China and Central Asia agreed to joint border inspections. The next day, Chinese and Kazakh officials conducted an inspection of Nur Zholy-Khorgos. They agreed to accept more trucks from Kazakhstan and recognize each other’s X-ray inspection images to reduce repeat checks. Kazakhstan’s customs authority explicitly linked the inspection to the regional meeting. The agreement illustrates how governments can address a shared concern through negotiations at an individual crossing. The Astana investment agreements reflected different national priorities. Kazakhstan pursued investment protection and applications for China’s BeiDou satellite navigation system, while Kyrgyzstan signed documents on an AI application center and processing industries. These were country-specific arrangements within the wider regional framework. The railway illustrates why some projects require only a few governments to agree. After recurring disagreements over its route and funding, China, Kyrgyzstan, and Uzbekistan reached a financing settlement in 2025. They did not need all five Central Asian governments to negotiate a single position. Kazakhstan already has direct rail links...