Kazakh opposition protest against media law changes

ALMATY, June 24 (Reuters) Kazakhstan's opposition, buoyed by US support, staged a protest today against proposed new legislation affecting the media which they say will mean a step back to the days of the Soviet Union.

A few hundred activists chanted ''Freedom!'' and held banners reading ''United, we'll win!'' in a park in the commercial capital, Almaty, as police officers in uniforms looked on from behind a towering statue of Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin.

''They think we don't understand that this new law is a ban on journalism,'' Tamara Kaleyeva, head of a freedom of speech group, told the crowd.

The government-proposed amendments, which have yet to be passed by parliament, would put journalists under tighter state control and make registration harder for news outlets.

The United States and the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) have criticised the proposal, saying it would harm freedom of expression in the Central Asian state.

Kazakh media are already under strong pressure from the state. The market is dominated by newspapers and television which rarely criticise President Nursultan Nazarbayev who has ruled Kazakhstan since 1989.

''Even without these amendments, no one would say we have freedom of speech. But they are trying to go even further. They are trying to send us back to the 1970s, to the Soviet Union,'' said Bolat Abilov, a Kazakh opposition leader.

Two Kazakh opposition leaders, Zamanbek Nurkadilov and Altynbek Sarsenbaiuly, have been killed since 2005, but the killings were scarcely covered by broadcasters and newspapers.

The killings have emboldened Kazakhstan's lethargic opposition to unite and hold rallies despite tough public order laws.

''The authorities want to stamp out journalism in this country,'' Gulzhan Yergaliyeva, an opposition journalist, told the crowd. ''To ban me as a journalist would kill me in the same way as Sarsenbaiuly was killed.'' Reuters SHB VC1458