Kazakhstan: Abolition of the death penalty has little meaning

On 18 February 2022, Catholic website Fides‚ quoted the Commission for Social Communications of the Catholic Church in Kazakhstan on the abolition of the death penalty: "In December 2021 there was an important event in the history of Kazakhstan: the country finally abolished the death penalty. This news unfairly went unnoticed due to the January 2022 riots. - On December 29, 2021, President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev signed the Law on Amendments and Additions to Certain Legislative Acts of the Republic of Kazakhstan on the Abolition of the Death Penalty: the measure officially abolished capital punishment and recognized life imprisonment as the highest level of punishment in the republic. Kazakhstan reached this result after a long journey. In fact, the death penalty was applied for the first 13 years of independent Kazakhstan's history: the last death sentence was carried out in 2003, when 12 prisoners were shot. An indefinite moratorium on the execution of death sentences, signed by the first President Nursultan Nazarbayev, entered into force in 2004. In total, 536 death sentences have been carried out in Kazakhstan since 1990." World Watch Research analyst Rolf Zeegers supports the end of capital punishment in Kazakhstan but notes: "The decision to abolish the death penalty was reached before large-scale demonstrations against the government took place in January 2022 and in no way indicates that government policies are improving. It would seem that it was merely an attempt to show the international community how humane the regime in Kazakhstan is at heart. However, that attempt surely failed when - in reaction to the January protests - President Tokayev stated in a televized speech on 7 January 2022, that he had "˜given the order to shoot to kill without warning" (Human Rights Watch, 7 January 2022). This all goes to show that very little has changed in Kazakhstan. The same applies to the freedom of religion in the country. Christians will profit nothing from the removal of the death penalty."