Sensitive case: A woman in Kazakhstan was sentenced to 5 years in prison for commenting on history

The Kazakh court sentenced a Russian-speaking woman from Kazakhstan, Tatyana Lizogub, to five years in prison. The reason was her comment on a TikTok video about the possible name change of Petropavlovsk.

Lizogub's original comment on TikTok: "Petropavlovsk is Russian, absolutely not Kazakh... Now someone wants to steal it, but it doesn't matter, everything will soon return to its original state... Then we will laugh."

The Kazakh investigative authorities considered these remarks to be socially harmful and suspected of threatening national territorial integrity. The prosecution stated that such comments may create political risks and incite discussions about redrawing national borders.

The authorities classified the remarks as propaganda promoting the destruction of Kazakhstan's territorial integrity.

In court, Tatyana denied the charges, stating that she was talking about "historical facts," which her grandmother told her, and that she just "failed to express herself correctly." However, the court's psychological and linguistic forensic assessment determined that her remarks had characteristics of propaganda promoting the destruction of territorial integrity.

Petropavlovsk was established in 1752 as a frontier fortress of the Russian Empire in the south, named after the apostles Peter and Paul, and later became an important commercial and administrative center in northern Kazakhstan.

Original article: toutiao.com/article/1859112335840268/

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