More on Merkhat
As a follow up to yesterday’s video, I’ve posted Keith Gordon’s story on Merkhat Sharipzhan. Keith Gordon was a GJSC2008 student and is currently an editor for the Carolina Review at UNC. After the last year’s session at Radio Free Europe, Keith conducted a private interview with Merkhat which led to the writing of this article. Check it out after the jump.
Fighting for Freedom
by Keith Gordon
The reemergence of Cold War grade tensions between Eastern and the Western World necessitates a renewed demand for the reporting of free institutions such as Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL). The independent (though publicly funded) broadcast service has carried out a mission of bringing “uncensored news and information to countries where a free press is either banned by the government or not fully established” since its establishment in 1949.
RFE/RL journalists have a reputation of incurring personal injury in order to provide unrestricted information to twenty one nations in the former Soviet bloc, Middle Eastern, and Central Asian nations they represent. In Washington Post Op-Ed this past summer, RFE/RL president Jeffrey Gedmin mentions a “colleague has lost two brothers who are widely believed to have been killed by the Kazakh equivalent of the KGB.”
That colleague, Merkhat Sharipzhan, a Kazakhstan native has covered the regime of Kazakh president NN for the past 15 years for Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and recently assumed the position of headline editor. For being a thorn in the government’s side, Sharipzhan and his family have suffered.
Askhat, Sharipzhan’s younger brother, once worked for Radio Free Europe. Shortly after interviewing two members of the opposition party in Kazakhstan, he was found dead on the street on July 20,, 2004. The official report deemed his death a result of a car fatality, despite the fact there were no injuries supporting the claim.
“You don’t have to be an expert,” reflects Sharipzhan. “We believe it was KGB.”
Within a couple of years, the two members of the opposition party Askhat had interviewed before his demise, died in separate incidents. Zamanbek Nurkadilov’s death, on November 11, 2005, was ruled a suicide despite the fact that he had two bullets in his chest and one in his head. Altynbek Sarsenbaev was found bound and shot, in an execution manner, the following February.
Sharipzhan, though disturbed by his brother’s death, did not lose his resolve. Granted, he has been working at the Prague headquarters since the service relocated there in 1994, but even away from Kazakhstan, the government’s critics are still at risk. As the Wall Street Journal reported in July, President Nazarbayev has hired “crisis-management consultants” who “tracked Mr. Nazarbayev’s critics when they were in the U.S.”—a sign that the Kazakh regime will do what it takes to silence its opponents, following the tactics of their Russian counterparts.
Sharipzhan grew up in a small village near the Chinese border of Kazakhstan in what was then the Soviet Union. He would secretly listen to Radio Free Europe with his father, Toktarkhan, a writer for a weekly satire publication called Ara-Shmel (“The Bee,” in Kazakh). Though just listening to those broadcasts was of great personal risk, Sharipzhan’s father knew that it was of utmost importance for his son’s education to hear something other than state-sponsored propaganda.
When Sharipzhan was young, he was drafted in the Red Army and stationed at a missile silo aimed at China. It was there that Sharipzhan heard of the infamous downing of a civilian South Korean passenger plane, Korean Air Lines flight 007, by Soviet anti-aircraft fire in 1983. The official Soviet military assessment asserted that the civilian craft was a spy plane. Sharipzhan was infuriated by the obvious deceit and demanded the truth. His superior officer reprimanded him for his lack of “political loyalty.”
The collapse of the Soviet Union gave way to the establishment of a free Kazakhstani state in 1991. Nursultan Nazarbayev, a former chairman of the Kazakh Council of Ministers ascended to the Presidency. Unfortunately, the devolution of Kazakhstan from the U.S.S.R did not generate the liberties expected in a thriving democracy. Thus, the Kazakh Bureau at Radio Free Europe remained open, while Bureaus in more thriving democracies such as Poland and the Czech Republic were able to cease operations.
While government corruption plaques plenty of nations, the lack of a robust free press in Kazakhstan gives free reign to corruption in Almaty. Sharipzhan relates a joke that he often tells to describe the Kazakh condition: “Under the Soviets it was a maximum security prison. Kazakhstan is now a minimum security prison. But it is still a prison.”
Sharipzhan came to RFE/RL after learning that the Kazakh Bureau was in need of native Kazakh speakers. Sharipzhan’s ability to speak several languages including Kazakh, German, English, Russian and Turkish, among others, made him an easy candidate for the Kazakh Bureau and he quickly rose to the position of bureau director.
Sharipzhan is a harsh critic of Nazarbayev which has held power since the formation of the Kazakh state in 1991. Nazarbayev’s government, composed largely of his family members and loyal cronies, has faced criticism for its numerous scandals. Under Sharipzhan’s direction, the Kazakh Bureau covered the so called “Kazakhgate Scandal” an ongoing investigation, in which the regime has been accused of siphoning tens of millions of dollars with the help of an American money launderer. Beyond the accusations of fraud and money laundering, the regime has been accused of exiling and even murdering opponents including the opposition members Askhat fatefully interviewed.
Askhat’s death meant Merkhat Sharipzhan was no longer reporting the story; he was now a part of it. The day after his brother’s death, Sharipzhan was interviewed by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty in hopes that the truth of his brother’s death would be made know to the public.
Unfortunately the search for the truth would, as it had before, bring tragedy to the Sharipzhan family.
In May 2005, Sharipzhan’s other brother Kairat, was found dead of an apparent brain hemorrhage. Sharipzhan says his brother was 38 years old and very healthy. The doctors produced no physical evidence to substantiate their claim and no autopsy was performed. Kairat’s wife told Merkhat that shortly prior to her husband’s death he had received information regarding the true nature Askhat’s death.
Threats and direct attacks have not intimidated Sharipzhan, who despite incredible tragedy remains a vision of optimism in the face of bitter circumstances. He loves to tell of the first time he met an America came to the United States, where it seemed to him that every house was a mansion.
He would rather marvel at the historic moments he covered with Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty than capitulate under the hardships he endured under the regimes oppressing his native Kazakhstan.
Today, Sharipzhan believes that the task of bringing about reform to Kazakhstan is all the more critical. In 2010, Kazakhstan will take the chair position of the Organization for Securities and Co-Operation despite that fact human rights concerned have been raised to the Helsinki Commission (as recently as July 2008) concerning growing religious intolerance, suppressed journalism, and Nazarbayev’s unwillingness to abdicate power.
Yet, Merkhat Sharipzhan goes into his new position ever hopeful of the future of not just Kazakhstan, but of all the nations receiving Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty broadcasts. He lives by a simple understanding of journalism that has carried him across decades of covering tragedy and triumph. “You have to be a part of what you cover.”
This article originally appeared in the February 2009 issue of the Carolina Review. It can be viewed in PDF format here.
