FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Vienna / Warsaw, 5 October 2026
“Killed, Watched, Sued: Kazakhstan’s Systemic Campaign Against Its Critics Abroad” Friday, 9 October 2026, 14:00–15:00 (CEST) Meeting Room 2 – Saski, Sofitel Victoria Warsaw, Królewska St. 11 OSCE Warsaw Human Dimension Conference 2026 Working languages: English and Russian
Freedom for Eurasia will convene a side event at the OSCE Warsaw Human Dimension Conference on Friday, 9 October, setting out how the Kazakh state, its beneficiaries and its agents pursue critics far beyond the country’s borders.
In June 2024, Kazakh opposition journalist Aidos Sadykov was shot outside his home in Kyiv, the city he had fled to as a place of refuge. He died two weeks later. More than two years on, no one has been held accountable. Ukraine has identified two Kazakh nationals as suspects; Kazakhstan has refused to extradite them or to cooperate with repeated requests for legal assistance.
His murder was not an isolated act of violence. It is the most extreme expression of a systemic strategy, and the campaign against his family did not end with his death.
What the event will cover
The discussion will lay out the full toolkit of Kazakhstan’s transnational repression:
- Assassination and physical attacks on journalists and activists in exile
- Surveillance, including the monitoring of Natalia Sadykova in Kyiv by a Kazakh intelligence officer operating under diplomatic cover
- Digital attacks: sustained phishing and platform manipulation targeting her and BASE media
- Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation (SLAPPs), including the suit brought against Natalia Sadykova, who has continued the couple’s work exposing the regime
These are not disconnected incidents. They are a coordinated toolkit, deployed against journalists, activists and dissidents wherever they try to rebuild their lives.
Why it matters
Exile is supposed to mean safety. The Sadykov case shows that it does not, even inside the OSCE region, and that the gaps which make this possible are legal and political ones that participating States have the power to close. A single family’s file documents the whole spectrum of transnational repression, used in sequence against one target for one reason: independent journalism that reached Kazakhstan’s ruling and business elite.
When a killing goes unpunished and is followed by surveillance and litigation against the survivor, the message to every exiled journalist is clear. The event will ask what OSCE participating States can and should do in response: anti-SLAPP protections for journalists in exile, sustained diplomatic pressure for accountability in the Sadykov case, and an end to the impunity that lets this apparatus operate.
[QUOTE FROM LEILA SEIITBEK – draft for your approval:] “Aidos Sadykov was killed in a country where he had sought protection, and two years later his widow is being watched and sued for continuing his work. This is not a series of coincidences. It is a method, and it will keep working until OSCE states make it costly.”
Speakers
- Natalia Sadykova, Kazakh journalist living in exile, founder of BASE media, widow of Aidos Sadykov
- Irina Petrushova, Kazakh journalist living in exile, founder of Respublika media
- Erfan Kudusov, Ukrainian Crimean Tatar public figure, director of the NGO Centre for Ethnological and Political Research of Crimea
- Moderator: Leila Seiitbek, Chairwoman, Freedom for Eurasia
Join us
We invite delegations of OSCE participating States, international organisations, civil society, journalists and all participants of the Warsaw Human Dimension Conference to attend, to hear the evidence first-hand and to take part in the discussion.
New report
The event draws on Freedom for Eurasia’s report Two Years Without Justice, published on 1 October 2026 in English and Russian. Based on court filings, independent investigative reporting and Freedom for Eurasia’s own documentation, it traces the assassination of Aidos Sadykov and the continuing repression of Natalia Sadykova, and sets out recommendations for the OSCE, the European Union and UN human rights bodies.
Read the report: https://freedomforeurasia.org/report/two-years-without-justice/
About Freedom for Eurasia
Freedom for Eurasia is a Vienna-based non-governmental organisation working on human rights, the rule of law, corruption and transnational repression in Central Asia and the wider post-Soviet space.
Contact: freedomeurasia@protonmail.com · freedomforeurasia.org
