Based upon an RFE/RL news story that came out yesterday:
Saken Tauzhanov, a journalist with, apparently, a no-nonsense style and a “caustic wit”, was killed August 2nd when he was hit by a large truck as he crossed the street. Mr. Tauzhanov wrote for kub.kz . At the time of his death, he was writing satirical articles about the upcoming Kazakhstan elections using the cast of Shrek as his motif.
RFE/RL quoted a non-governmental journalist advocacy representative, who noted the following list of previous Kazakhstani Journalists who have died as a result of car accidents, almost always as pedestrians:
2002: Aleksei Pugaev, killed in a car accident, who wrote the Eurasia newspaper;
2002: Nuri Muftakh, run over by a bus in a bus parking lot;
2004: Askhat Sharipzhan was hit by a car;
2004: Yuri Baev in Uralsk after writing about Kazakhgate, who was chief editor at newspaper Talap;
2004: Batyrkhan Darimbet was killed in a car crash (2005), who was a former correspondent for Radio Free Liberty/Radio Liberty and ran the newspaper Azat.
2007: Now Saken Tauzhanov, known for his recent articles that clearly opposed the authorities, was also hit by a vehicle.
And we are still waiting, now for 4 months + 1 week, to learn the whereabouts of Oralgaisha Omarshanova, who wrote for the weekly Law and Justice newspaper. She disappeared on March 30th while investigating an ethnic clash between Chechens and Kazakhs.
