Kazakhstan: Environmentalists face prison over opposition to gold mine, 23 February 2022

Two villagers who campaigned against a gold mining project in northern Kazakhstan are facing prison as prosecutors strain to link them to a banned opposition movement. 

The Stepnogorsk city court has for weeks been hearing the case against Nikolai Katchiyev and Aleksandra Nazarenko, a pair of residents of the mining village of Bestobe in Akmola region accused of “inciting social hatred”...

Katchiyev and Nazarenko were among the members of a 28-person working group set up at the behest of Bestobe’s village administration in June 2020 to hold talks with the then-operator of the gold mine, Kazakhaltyn, over the future of the project. 

With the formidable Nazarenko leading the charge against the company, the public hearings became acrimonious affairs and no compromise was reached. Relations between the company and community grew only worse after the Ecology Ministry intervened on the side of the villagers, ordering the company to cease construction of a tailings dump that had gone ahead without public hearings or state expertise...

Ownership of the gold mining project changed in 2020, when another established mining company, Altynalmas, completed a three-stage purchase of Kazakhaltyn...