Mirshat Sarsenbayev

Affiliated media: Online activist, Video blogger

Incident date: May 4, 2020

Attack type:

• Attacks via judicial or economic means

Who attacked: Authorities

Source: JFJ Expert

Location: Kazakhstan, Kostanay Province, Karabulak village

Additional information:

On the 4th of May, the Karabalyk district court incurred an administrative penalty in the form of a warning to video blogger and civil activist Mirshat Sarsenbaev for violating state of emergency regulations. The court announced, that in the evening on the 28th of April, he was “outdoors during the quarantine period”, which broke temporary restrictions imposed by the Chief Public Health Officer of the Kostanay Region in Kazakhstan. Mirshat Sarsenbaev admitted, that he was indeed in the evening, near a school, as a responsible citizen, to check whether a well into which a child had fallen and caused a security guard to break a leg was closed. The blogger’s video titled “Road to school, a danger to life”, which was published on his “VKontakte” page on the 29th of April, had resonated widely publicly. The court also ordered local authorities to fix the issue addressed in the video within a month.