Vladimir Ivanovich Kozlov (Russian and Kazakh: Владимир Иванович Козлов) is a Kazakh journalist and politician who has been a leader of the democratic opposition in Kazakhstan and a candidate for his country's presidency. In 2012, he was the defendant in what Deutsche Welle described as "the first political trial in Kazakhstan." The US charged Kazakhstan with using its criminal-justice system "to silence a leading opposition voice." Kozlov, who was found guilty and served a prison sentence, has been designated by Amnesty International as a "prisoner of conscience." He was released in 2016.
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Early life and education
Kozlov was born on August 10, 1960, in Aktobe.
Media career
From 1990 to 1996, Kozlov worked as an editor at the TV channel AKTiVi.
From 1996 to 1998, he worked in advertising and public relations. He then served as the communications specialist for the Mangyshlak Nuclear Power Plant.
He is a co-founder of Aktau-Lada, the first private television channel in Kazakhstan.
He currently runs the internet project Kuresker.org, which focuses on the rights of civic activists and the imprisoned.
Political career
He entered politics in 2001, joining the opposition party Democratic Choice of Kazakhstan. In 2003, he was elected to the party's Political Council, and later he became a member of the Presidium of the Political Council.
During a visit to Ukraine in 2004, Kozlov was struck by the effects of the Orange Revolution, which had enhanced democratic values in that country. As a result of that experience, he decided to become more politically active.
After Democratic Choice of Kazakhstan was declared illegal, Kozlov co-founded the Alga! (Forward!) Party in 2005, and has been its leader since 2007. Under his leadership, the party expanded significantly, and is now the largest opposition party in Kazakhstan, although Kazakh authorities have refused to allow it to register as an official party. Alga! has joined with the Civil Society Movement Khalyk Maidany (People's Front) in criticizing the government of Nursultan Nazarbayev. During the years 2006 to 2012, he traveled extensively in Europe, visiting various European parliaments in an effort to formulate policies to develop Kazakh civil society. In 2009, he led a campaign in Europe to deny Kazakhstan the presidency of the OSCE, arguing that the Kazakh government's human rights abuses rendered it unworthy to hold that post.
Presidential candidacy
In the spring of 2011, Kozlov was a democratic opposition candidate for president of Kazakhstan, but was excluded from the April 3 election, in which Nazarbayev received 95.5% of the vote. The Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights rejected the election's results.
Strike in Zhanaozen
In December of the same year, Kozlov and Alga! initiated an effort to supply water and tents to striking oil workers in the remote western town of Zhanaozen. The workers occupied the town's central square for seven months. Kozlov personally organized seminars for the strikers to instruct them in the ways of peaceful protest. Yet violence ensued, with police, according to eyewitnesses, firing on unarmed protesters. Over a dozen strikers (the reported number varies) were killed in Zhanaozen and nearby Shetpe, with authorities claiming that the police had been acting in self-defense. Kozlov was part of an independent public monitoring group that went to Zhanaozen in January 2012 to investigate allegations of torture and other acts of abuse of strikers in police custody. Kozlov then met with members of the European Parliament and the European Commission to discuss the crisis and report on his findings. He called for dialogue and for an international investigation into the government's handling of the strike.
Trial and conviction
On January 23, 2012, after returning to Kazakhstan from his meetings with EP and EC officials, Kozlov was arrested by members of Kazakhstan's National Security Committee. His home, the Alga! party offices in Almaty, and the homes of other party members were searched.
His arrest was protested by Freedom House. He was detained for almost nine months while awaiting trial.
Polish activist and former prisoner of conscience Adam Michnik wrote a letter to Nazarbayev, dated July 30, 2012, pleading with him to release Kozlov and other activists and oil workers who had been imprisoned in the wake of events in Zhanaozen.
On August 16, he went on trial at the Mangistau Regional Court in Aktau on charges of inciting social hatred, calling to the overthrow of the constitutional order of the state, and creating and managing an organized criminal group. Kozlov said that the charges represented an effort by the government to silence the opposition.
Deutsche Welle called Kozlov's trial "the first political trial in Kazakhstan." The US State Department's 2012 Human Rights Report on Kazakhstan cited Kozlov's arrest and detention, and the confiscation of his personal property, at length as representative of that country's poor human-rights record.
He was prosecuted alongside two other opposition leaders, Akzhanat Aminov and Serik Sapargali.
The National Democratic Institute compared Kozlov's trial to a "Stalin-era political trial."
On October 8, 2012, Kozlov was found guilty, the judge ruling that Kozlov, in collusion with exiled politician Mukhtar Ablyazov, had incited oil workers in Zhanaozen to violence. Koslov was sentenced to seven years and 6 months in prison, with the other two defendants given suspended sentences of three and four years. The court also ordered that Kozlov's property be confiscated and ordered him to pay US$10,000 in court costs.
Imprisonment
It was reported on August 29, 2013, that according to Kozlov's wife, Aliya Turusbekova, Kozlov had health problems that were not being treated in the prison colony, EC-164/3, in which he was being held. She warned that he could have a stroke. Turusbekova said that he had severe headaches, high blood pressure, and intense pain in his right hip joint, but an application he had made for medical care had been ignored. Kozlov's physician, Bakhyt Tumenova, explained that his patient suffered from vascular disorders and required medication, and that the headaches indicated the danger of a stroke.
It was also reported that Kozlov was being heavily worked in the prison colony, doing kitchen work every day from 6 a.m. to 8 p.m., and that he had asked for a transfer to a prison colony closer to his home. A significant factor in his desire to be closer to home was that his wife was pregnant. The Open Dialog Foundation maintained that an anonymous source had informed the Respublika website "that Kazakh secret services [were] preparing a provocation against Aliya Turusbekova in order to exert pressure on her husband...to compel the politician to confess his guilt, give incriminating testimony against Mukhtar Ablyazov and publicly repent."
Kozolov was released on parole in August 2016. Three years later, he emigrated with his family to Ukraine, where he started the Kuresker.org project.