Kazakh opposition paper defiant after new raid

A Kazakh opposition newspaper Friday vowed to carry on printing despite mounting pressure from the authorities after its print run was confiscated for the second week in a row. The raids on the opposition Respublika newspaper come amid increasing attention on human and media rights in Kazakhstan as it prepares to become the first ex-Soviet state to chair the OSCE on Jan. 1.

Respublika, which stands accused of causing a run on deposits of a large bank, said it had self-printed after its run was again seized Thursday, in a rare act of defiance in this tightly controlled state. "Despite this technical censorship, we continue to work. The newspaper is coming out and in just the same way as before," the paper said in a press release.

"Today, at seven in the morning, at points of sale in central Almaty there was a fresh newspaper printed on a risograph," a digital printing system. "Let it be in another format, or on a risograph, or even on a paper clip, but Respublika will come out."

The paper accused agents of the KNB - ex-KGB - and financial police of raiding a printing press near Almaty Thursday as it was preparing the newspaper's weekly run, a week after a similar raid was carried out at its offices.

A spokesman for the KNB denied that the agency had anything to do with the raid. The financial police declined to immediately comment on the matter, but did not deny involvement.

Kazakhstan, an energy-rich Central Asian state set on January 1 to become the first ex-Soviet state to chair the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, has drawn fierce criticism over the Respublika case

Rights groups have criticized the decision to grant Kazakhstan the rotating chairmanship of the trans-Atlantic security body and object that the Central Asian country is far from meeting rights norms.

The energy-rich country, ruled by President Nursultan Nazarbayev since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, promoted itself as a business-friendly democracy to win the OSCE chairmanship.