Prosecution of head of Kazakh foundation supporting victims of violence
Kazakhstan: An interview with the head of the NeMolchi.KZ Foundation about persecution at home and working abroad
Article published on the rus.azattyq.org website
16.05.25
Dinara Smailova, the head of the NeMolchi.KZ Foundation, was not extradited from Europe to Kazakhstan, despite Kazakhstan having put her on a wanted list. The foundation helps victims of violence.
Dinara has been living in Montenegro since 2023, and the country is currently considering her request for asylum, which has resulted in the postponement of Astana’s request for her extradition. In an interview with Azattyk, Smailova discussed the criminal cases brought against her in Kazakhstan and the challenges she and her foundation are facing.
On 15 April, they announced that they would continue to seek to bring Smailova to justice, emphasising that she was involved in six cases relating to the dissemination of deliberately false information, violations of privacy and fraud.
The prosecutor’s office provided details, which is extremely rare, and accused Smailova of illegally collecting money through NeMolchi.KZ publications about cases of violence. According to the prosecutors, the social activist spent the collected funds on personal expenses.
Smailova rejects this, claiming that the cases have been falsified. She explained her position in detail to Azattyk.
In spring 2023, Kazakhstan was shaken by a violent incident in which several girls in Ust-Kamenogorsk brutally beat a peer and forced her to expose herself. They filmed the entire incident on a smartphone and threatened to post the video online. Amid public outcry, the police announced that they were investigating the case under ‘Hooliganism’.
The Prosecutor General’s Office now claims that, in April 2023, Smailova published false information suggesting that the victim had taken her own life.
Smailova admits that she posted information about suicide based on reports from the public in Ust-Kamenogorsk and one of the foundation’s sources. She claims that the post was deleted immediately after journalists reported that the information about suicide was not confirmed.
‘I quickly archived the post and wrote a disclaimer to say that the information hadn’t been confirmed. Then the girl’s aunt approached me. We went on air with her in the evening and broke the news of the suicide together. But she was already telling me details that nobody else knew. We took this case on at the request of the aunt,” recalls Smailova. Despite the fact that there was a refutation, despite the post being up for literally five minutes, and despite the fact that I was not the first to write about suicide — the public in Ust-Kamenogorsk had written to me about it before — this case was initiated.
The case in Ust-Kamenogorsk is not confined to the article concerning the ‘deliberate dissemination of false information’. Smailova has also been charged with fraud. According to the prosecutor’s office, she collected 20 million tenge for the victim’s defense, but only spent a small portion of the donations on the lawyer’s travel expenses and kept the rest for herself.
The head of the NeMolchi.KZ Foundation considers this statement to be untrue. She notes that the accounting of this case is different, emphasising that the foundation managed to bring the case to a close and secure the conviction of the attackers. Two of the girls received three years in prison and one received a one-year restraining order.
“We imprisoned these girls in Ust-Kamenogorsk. We spent a lot of money on a lawyer. He was the most expensive lawyer we had ever hired, because we had never received more than two million before. There were a lot of business trips, and we mostly paid for them. We spent the most on flights and hotels,” explains Smailova.
In fact, about 890 000 tenge was collected for this girl. We just took it out of our own funds. How are we doing? We set up a post to talk about an urgent appeal for donations. During that period, when they say we raised 20 million tenge, we had six posts and six urgent appeals. There were also two cases of child rape. We have all the reports. The checks are there and everything has been confirmed by both the lawyer and the injured party. Nevertheless, a fraud case is being opened.
Dinara Smailova believes that she is being persecuted in retaliation for her foundation exposing unpleasant truths about mutual responsibility and the inaction of the authorities and security forces in response to violence.
According to the social activist, the case in Ust-Kamenogorsk showed that the teenage girls had acted shamelessly, probably believing that they would not be punished. Smailova claims that the mother of one of the convicted girls worked in the Department of Education.
Smailova revealed in court that the girls who perpetrated the attack had spent several months discussing plans in a chat to rape the victim and enlist boys, but having failed to find accomplices, they decided to beat her and strip her themselves. Not all of those involved in the beating were brought to justice, and no one from the school administration was fired, emphasises NeMolchi.KZ.
In 2023, the NeMolchi.KZ Foundation made public two cases in which police officers were accused of rape. One of these occurred in Konaev, where two officers were charged with assaulting a 14-year-old schoolgirl. The second case took place in Taldykorgan, where Marat Kushtybayev, the former chief of the city’s police department, was charged with raping a detained woman in his office when taken for questioning. The foundation’s reports caused a stir and the incidents were widely reported in the media.
Smailova believes that the police are taking revenge on her for disclosing information and ‘fabricating’ cases, and are possibly putting pressure on the victims about whom the foundation wrote.
A few years ago, Smailova was diagnosed with cancer and underwent surgery. Despite the difficulties, including criminal cases against its head and frozen bank accounts, the NeMolchi.KZ Foundation continues to work. According to Dinara Smailova, only nine employees remain in the organisation.
During the nine years that the foundation has been operating, its lawyers have provided thousands of consultations for women and children and secured convictions for hundreds of rapists. The organisation’s representatives participated in the development of amendments to legislation that toughen penalties for abuse against women and children.
Dinara Smailova and her husband currently live in Montenegro, which is considering her asylum application. She submitted this before the official from Astana sent an extradition request. Dalibor Tomovich, the lawyer representing the Kazakh woman, says that the court took into account the risk of his client being persecuted if she were to be extradited to her homeland.
