Oleg Gusev

Affiliated media: Inbussiness.kz, Journalist

Incident date: November 17, 2021

Attack type:

• Illegal impediments to journalistic activity, denial of access to information

Who attacked: Non-authorities

Source: Adil Soz

Location: Kazakhstan, East Kazakhstan Province, Temirtau

Additional information:

ArcelorMittal organised environmental hearings on «draft standards of maximum permissible emissions for the steel department of ArcelorMittal Temirtau JSC». Two journalists and four ecologists were not allowed to attend the hearings. As the company’s environmental director Madina Kuantayeva stated, it was necessary to obtain a permit to participate in the hearings. However, as the correspondent of Inbussiness.kz Oleg Gusev writes, he sent a letter in advance to the email indicated in the JSC’s message about participation in the hearings offline. Ecologists, who were also not issued a pass to the building of the Department, tried for a long time to connect to the meeting in Zoom, but «the number of participants in the video conference were unreasonably limited by the organisers to no more than 100 people, the organisers refused to connect the other participants». Later, they were connected to the broadcast of the hearings.