Video: Free Aron Atabek! Campaign Kazakhstan protest outside the Kazakhstan Embassy, London
Aron Atabek is a dissident, prize-winning poet and creative writer in Kazakhstan. On his behalf, Zhainagul and Askar Aidarkhan, his wife and son, flew to London to participate in a Campaign Kazakhstan concert on Tuesday 2 October featuring the renowned Cellorhythmics, led by Kazakh cellist, Alfia Nakipbekova.
This was an evening of music, poetry and protest to help support those families affected by the police massacre in Zhanaozen, Kazakhstan on 16 December last year.
Then on 5 October 2012, Zhainagul and Askar Aidarkhan protested with Campaign Kazakhstan outside the Kazakhstan embassy calling for Aron Atabek to be freed.
They were joined by cellist Alfia Nakipbekova and Niall McDevitt of the International Times, who read an English translation of Aron’s poems.
Aron Atabek in currently in jail in Kazakhstan, having served five years of an 18 year sentence for supposedly orchestrating “mass disorder” – protesting against the demolition of the shanty-town Shanrak.
He vehemently denies any guilt, and has rejected an offer by the government of a pardon on condition that he confessed.
‘Nazarbayev’s Regime and Revolution’ is one of the collections of Atabek’s prose and poetry published online since his imprisonment.
His works are highly critical of Nursultan Nazarbayev, the President of Kazakhstan, and his policies, lamenting the lack of democracy in this former Soviet nation.
Ben Robinson, from Campaign Kazakhstan, said “Aron Atabek’s imprisonment is yet another clear example of what happens to those who stand up for human rights, workers’ rights and the rights of people whose homes are under attack in Kazakhstan.
“This despotic regime – advised by ‘Tony Blair Associates’ – fears all independent voices, including poets and writers like Aron Atabek, and other cultural figures”.