The CCTV footage shown at the domestic abuse trial was disturbing: The defendant is seen dragging his wife by her hair, and then punching and kicking her. Hours after it was recorded, she died of brain trauma.
The trial of businessman Kuandyk Bishimbayev, Kazakhstan’s former economy minister, in the death of his wife, Saltanat Nukenova, has touched a nerve in the Central Asian country. Tens of thousands of people have signed petitions calling for harsher penalties for domestic violence.
On April 11, senators approved a bill toughening spousal abuse laws, and President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev signed it four days later. It’s been dubbed “Saltanat’s Law” in her honor.
Kazakhs are riveted by Bishimbayev’s trial, the first in the country of over 19 million people to be streamed online, and debates about it are dominating social media. Many see it as a moment of truth for Tokayev’s promises of reforms and making officials accountable.
The 44-year-old Bishimbayev, once seen as a fresh, Western-educated face of Kazakhstan’s government under former leader Nursultan Nazarbayev, was jailed for bribery in 2018 before being pardoned less than two years into his 10-year sentence.
Nukenova, 31, was found dead in November in a restaurant owned by one of her husband’s relatives. Bishimbayev, who was charged with torturing and killing her, for weeks maintained his innocence but admitted Wednesday in court that he had beaten her and “unintentionally” caused her death.
His lawyers initially disputed medical evidence indicating Nukenova died from repeated blows to the head. They also portrayed her as prone to jealousy and violence, although no video from the restaurant’s security cameras that was played in court has shown her attacking Bishimbayev.
Aitbek Amangeldy, Nukenova’s older brother and a key prosecution witness, told The Associated Press that he had no doubt his sister’s tragic fate has shifted attitudes about domestic violence.
“It changes people’s minds when they see directly what it looks like when a person is tortured,” Amangeldy said in a video interview, citing the harrowing video played in court.
“Of course, it’s difficult for me to be in court, to listen to various things that the defendant’s side has been saying,” he said. “It’s even more painful to know that (their) words are being broadcast across the country. But I understand that these broadcasts are also educational material, including for lawyers and human rights defenders.”
Like neighboring Russia, Kazakhstan largely remains a patriarchal society, and progress has been slow on issues such as domestic violence, sexual harassment, and disparities in employment.
According to a 2018 study backed by UN Women, the United Nations’ gender equality agency, about 400 women die from domestic violence each year in Kazakhstan, although many abuse cases go unreported.
In 2017, Kazakhstan decriminalized beatings and other acts causing “minor” physical damage, making them punishable only by fines or short jail terms. Russia enacted a similar law that year, outraging women’s rights advocates. Kazakhstan’s new law reverses this, increasing penalties for assailants and introducing new criminal offenses, including harassment of minors.
Days after Nukenova’s death, her relatives launched an online petition urging authorities to pass “Saltanat’s Law” to bolster protection for those at risk of domestic violence. It quickly got over 150,000 signatures.
As Bishimbayev’s trial began, more than 5,000 Kazakhs wrote senators urging tougher laws on abuse, Kazakh media said.
Still, Amangeldy said the law’s final version failed to include all the provisions his family and allies had wanted, noting that “we still have no legal norms around stalking and harassment” of adults.
Viktoriya Kim, a Kazakhstan-based researcher at Human Rights Watch, said the very notion of “domestic violence” is absent from the country’s criminal code. Including it, she said, would send “a clearer signal.”
But Amangeldy argues that Kazakh society has clearly “passed a point of no return.”
“For years, across Kazakhstan and the whole region, the issue (of domestic violence) was shrouded in silence. Raising the issue is already half the solution,” he said.