Yelena Semenova

Affiliated media: Blogger, Human rights defender

Incident date: June 24, 2021

Attack type:

• request to remove or block the article and/or refutation

Who attacked: Authorities

Source: Adil Soz

Location: Kazakhstan, Almaty Province, Almaty

Additional information:

The penitentiary institution ZD-158/1 in Taraz filed a lawsuit to protect the business reputation of Yelena Semenova, a human rights defender working on prisoners’ rights, with the Pavlodar City Court. The reason was her post on Facebook from May 13, 2020, with the title «It seems to me that in closed institutions soon you can buy anything, even a tank». The post is accompanied by a video message from convict Babayev. The plaintiff asks to recognise the arguments from the video message as untrue, defaming the business reputation of the plaintiff, and to publish a refutation in the social network. On June 24, the court ruled to partially satisfy the claim. The court recognised Semenova’s actions in posting the video clip as illegal, and the information from the video message as untrue and defamatory of the plaintiff’s business reputation. The court ruled that Semenova should delete the video message from her social network page.