AQTAU, Kazakhstan -- Two civil rights activists in the western Kazakh city of Aqtau have been sentenced to one year of restricted freedom for supporting the banned Democratic Choice of Kazakhstan (DVK) movement and its associate, the unregistered Koshe (Street) party amid an ongoing crackdown on supporters of the two opposition groups.
A court in the Caspian Sea port city sentenced 32-year-old Abzal Qanaliev late in the evening on December 21. The ruling came a day after a separate ruling by the court against 29-year-old Aizhan Ismakova.
Qanaliev and Ismakova were also barred from using social networks for 30 and 24 months, respectively.
Both pleaded not guilty.
Many activists across the Central Asian country have been handed lengthy prison terms or parole-like, restricted-freedom sentences in recent years for their involvement with the DVK and Koshe, as well as for taking part in rallies organized by the two groups.
DVK is led by Mukhtar Ablyazov, the fugitive former head of Kazakhstan's BTA Bank and outspoken critic of the government. The authorities labeled the DVK "extremist" and banned it in March 2018.
The crackdown on the two groups' supporters and other activists has increased recently, before and after the former Soviet republic's Independence Day on December 16.
The holiday coincides with two sensitive events in modern Kazakh history, the anniversaries of the 1986 Kazakh anti-Kremlin youth demonstrations in Almaty, known as the Zheltoqsan revolt, and a deadly 2011 police crackdown against protesting oil workers in the southwestern town of Zhanaozen, when at least 16 oil workers died.
