Kazakhstan sues Google, Twitter and Facebook

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Published time: November 23, 2012 11:58
Edited time: November 23, 2012 15:58

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Clashes, Court, Human rights, Internet, Kazakhstan, Law, Mass media, Opposition, Politics

Google, Facebook, Twitter, and LiveJournal are among the defendants in a lawsuit filed by Kazakh prosecutors seeking to shutdown some opposition media outlets in the republic.

The prosecutors are demanding the websites stop publishing material from Kazakh opposition sources.

"The company Google is a defendant. I don't know if they know it or not, but they are on trial and they need to present their comment on this lawsuit," Sergey Utkin, a lawyer for information portal Respublika (Republic) told journalists on Friday.

He also presented a copy of the lawsuit, which names popular social networking services Facebook, Twitter, LiveJournal, and the Respublika information portal as co-defendants, reports Interfax agency.

On Thursday, a court in Almaty banned the opposition newspaper Golos Respubliki (Voice of Republic).

The ruling came a day after state prosecutors filed applications to ban eight local newspapers and 23 internet-sources – all united under the Respublika brand – and several international news portals. The officials claim the media outlets undermine security in the former Soviet Republic.

They also demanded that unregistered opposition political movements Alga and Khalyk Maidany are recognized as extremist and outlawed.

The move comes shortly after a court sentenced several Kazakh opposition leaders who were found guilty of inflaming social hatred and calling for the violent overthrow of the government. The activists were arrested following violent riots the oil city Zhanaozen in western Kazakhstan in December last year. Dozens were injured and 16 people killed as the result of the unrest.

Comments (4)

beijing shots (unregistered) 26.11.2012 09:01

google, twitter, and facebook is a threat to every countries i.t market. if google, facebook, and twitter dominate all these countries, then what are the local developers supposed to do? theres only a few countries in the world whove been able to do their own thing. China is one- with baidu, renren, weibo, and qq. As far as I know, google, twitter, and facebook are irrelevant in China. Russia has yandex, but lacks a strong social network, and microblog. Google, twitter, and facebook's relevance in Russia is at the expense of the Russian people themselves. But still, it's better than europe. I've never even heard of any instant messenger, search engine, social network, or microblog coming out of europe. Same goes for the south korean, and japanese regimes. The more power you give google, twitter, and facebook, the less power your country will have. No. There is not enough to go around for everyone. It's either us or them.

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Shulbinsky 26.11.2012 01:58

The same people backing the 911 inside jobs, Libyan terrorists and FSA are now attempting on Kazakhstan. Bravo to Nazarbayev in crushing those thugs!

Undo

Brasivnika 25.11.2012 22:49

All those sites do is collect bucketfulls of information on every person and keep it for storage. Later they will sell it off to the CIA or FBI at top dollar. It is refreshing to see that a nation is trying to do something about it.

Undo

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