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The Almaty metropolis administration in the end allowed a variety of feminist organizations to carry a rally inside Gandhi Park, exterior the core of Kazakhstan’s most populous metropolis, for Worldwide Girls’s Day on March 8, after months of bans and protests.
In line with the authorities, the demonstration must be confined inside the park and couldn’t collect greater than 300 individuals. Whereas the organizers revered the previous request, regardless of having lobbied till the final minute for holding a march throughout town, they may not cease residents from becoming a member of, and greater than 700 gathered for the two-hour occasion.
As typical, the presence of police and secret service officers in plain garments was seen, particularly given the colourful outfits that activists and attendees wore with pleasure.
“The ‘different’ rally of the ‘males in black’ round us is unquestionably extra boring,” Valeriya Ibrayeva, an artwork curator in her 60s and an everyday at March 8 rallies, stated.
Equally to final 12 months, a variety of feminist organizations needed to battle to achieve an settlement with the authorities, which denied the chance to carry a march. Final 12 months, town administration stated there was street work and allowed a rally inside the sq. in entrance of the Academy of Sciences as an alternative.
This 12 months, the pretext for denying a march was extra blurry . The authorities in the end confined the rally to Gandhi Park, a much less central location, as a result of the Academy of Sciences sq. had been booked by a so-called League of Volunteers.
In 2021, greater than 500 individuals gathered and marched alongside Shevchenko road between these two places, an city demonstration allowed for the primary time after years of denials, fines, and arrests.
This 12 months, activists demanded the adoption of a regulation towards harassment that will give certainty of punishment towards the perpetrators. As well as, some organizations confused the necessity to take measures to shrink the pay hole between women and men.
Regardless of a big, assorted attendance, little was stated about LGBTQ rights, which have been a goal of nationalist, conservative teams prior to now. An indication explicitly chastising intercourse work acted as a reminder that extra conversations about girls’s rights can be useful for the feminist debate inside the nation.
Whereas being centered on Worldwide Girls’s Day, the rally additionally featured a speech by feminist and LGBTQ activist Zhanar Sekerbayeva, who’s operating for a seat in Almaty’s native council within the March 19 legislative elections.
A number of different candidates from the varied districts of Almaty attended the rally and campaigned.
Feminist matters usually are not outstanding within the marketing campaign for the upcoming elections, though extra conservative candidates have tried to disrupt Sekerbayeva’s marketing campaign by taking down or protecting her promotional posters. Within the final week of the marketing campaign, a number of candidates have lamented being topic to strain.
In sending his congratulations for Worldwide Girls’s Day, President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev confused “the position of humankind’s stunning half within the household, within the lifetime of society, within the growth of the state.”
Whereas slipping on conventional patriarchal tropes, Tokayev additionally added: “The federal government will at all times try to make sure gender equality, defend girls’s rights, and strengthen household values.”
Household values stay key in Kazakhstan’s conventional society, and feminist activist have struggled to separate their position as girls from their choices to turn into wives or moms.
The dismissal of any feminist discourse up to now denotes a minimization of the motion, which has grown in numbers and in consciousness prior to now few years, as additionally demonstrated by yearly feminist festivals organized all through Central Asia.
Within the capital, Astana, authorities stated they might permit a feminist march, however on April 8. Activists are awaiting affirmation as a way to perceive the rationale for the postponement.
Ought to or not it’s allowed to march on, the feminist motion may push for extra equality and produce optimistic change in Kazakhstan’s laws and in society at massive. For now, the authorities have determined to encompass activists with “males in black” and confine them to a small sq..
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