Kazakhstan Toughens Domestic Violence Laws After Brutal Murder
Kazakh survivors of domestic violence at a conference on domestic abuse in November 2016 (Flickr).
Kazakhstan increased punishment for domestic violence with a new law passed by both houses of the Kazakh Parliament and signed by Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev on April 15. The law criminalizes all acts of violence against women and children, including “light, medium, and severe harm to health.” It will also establish family support centers to offer services to domestic violence victims, criminalizes sexual harassment of minors, and toughens penalties for kidnapping and unlawfully imprisoning minors. Kazakhstan is the first country in the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), a regional organization which includes Russia, Belarus, and a number of post-Soviet Central Asian countries, to enact such legislation.
The law comes in response to widespread public outrage over former Kazakh National Economy Minister Kuandyk Bishimbayev’s brutal murder of his wife Saltanat Nukemova in November 2023. Bishimbayev beat Nukemova to death in his own restaurant and ordered his employee to delete CCTV footage of the incident. According to the coroner’s report, Nukemova suffered a broken nasal bone and bruising on her face, head, arms, and hands.
Some footage of the beating was not deleted and has spread across the internet in Kazakhstan and other post-Soviet states over the past few weeks. This footage, along with a January video posted by a Kazakh makeup store showing women how to cover up injuries from domestic violence, has brought discussions about the issue of domestic violence in Kazakhstan to a boiling point, pushing the government to adopt the new law.
Nukemova’s friends and family have claimed that Bishimbayev beat and psychologically abused Nukemova over their year-long marriage. Nonetheless, Bishimbayev called Nukemova provocative, emotionally unstable, prone to violence, and an alcoholic in attempts to smear her ahead of his trial. His lawyers have also claimed that Nukemova is responsible for her own murder because she provoked the argument that led Bishimbayev to attack her.
Bishimbayev faces up to 20 years in prison on accusations of torture and murder with extreme violence, but his light treatment in a previous criminal case has led many Kazakhs fear he will not face adequate punishment. In 2018, Bishimbayev was sentenced to 10 years in prison for accepting bribes and embezzling state money while working as the National Economy Minister of Kazakhstan, but former President Nursultan Nazarbayev pardoned and released him in January 2019.
Domestic violence is a pervasive issue in Kazakhstan and post-Soviet states in general. Kazakh police receive over 100,000 complaints about domestic violence annually, and 17% of ever-partnered women in Kazakhstan aged 18-75 say they have experienced physical or sexual violence from their partner. This high rate of domestic violence is in part the result of relaxed laws: in July 2017, then-President Nazarbayev decriminalized some forms of domestic violence, following a similar decriminalization of domestic violence in Russia in February of that year. Kazakh activists hope the new domestic violence law will help address the issue.