The Fight To Publish

Inside a dissenting Kazakh newspaper, where free speech comes at a price and getting published means risking everything.

By Simon Ostrovsky Two months ago I stood on the fourth floor of police headquarters in the Kazakhstan city of Zhanaozen. I was staring at a group of bloodied men who I never expected to see while filming The Fight to Publish, which was supposed to be a film about a plucky opposition newspaper defying the authorities. But I did not have a camera. The men stood in two rows facing the walls of a long corridor with their backs facing each other. Soldiers and police rushed between this corridor of stooped shoulders, entering and exiting and slamming doors. I heard someone scream in agony when one of the doors opened. It was only hours since the worst violence in Kazakhstan's modern history had been visited upon oil workers here. But then, as now, few people around the world have heard of Zhanaozen. On December 16, Independence Day, a protest for better wages at their jobs in the oil industry had erupted into a riot and was put down with police guns. At least 17 people died.