The prosecution of leading Kazakh democracy and human rights activist Yevgeny Zhovtis is politically motivated, new reports suggest.
Zhovtis, director of the Bureau for Human Rights and Rule of Law, a grantee of the National Endowment for Democracy, was sentenced to four years in prison last month for accidentally striking and killing a man with his car.
His lawyers and a leading independent journalist told RFE/RL’s Kazakh Service that the Kazakh authorities’ actions prove the political nature of the prosecution.  They note that a Supreme Court judge admitted that he did not read the verdict against Zhovtis but still said that it was correct.
Zhovtis is a member of the steering committee of the World Movement for Democracy. His case is the latest in a series of detentions and harassment of democracy and civil society activists in Central Asia that highlights the entrenched authoritarianism of the region’s regimes.
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