Kazakh-language activist freed after day in mental institution

Public pressure has forced authorities to discharge a known Kazakh-language campaigner from a mental institution a day after she was placed there for alleged “aggressive” behaviour.

“Kazakh-language defender Ruza [Bisenbay-Tegi] is back with us again,” MP Kazybek Isa said on Friday.

Isa said her release was secured after “a day and a night of conversations with relevant officials”.

“Finally, justice prevailed,” he said.

Bisenbay-Tegi was taken to a mental hospital in her home city of Pavlodar on Wednesday after she “aggressively demanded that passers-by spoke the state language”, the police said in a statement.

“She aggressively harassed citizen Zhunusov, who called 102 [rescue service] and asked for help. At the same time Zhunusov called an ambulance,” the statement said.

It said that the paramedics who arrived at the scene established that Bisenbay-Tegi’s behaviour carried signs of “delusional disorder” and took her to the Pavlodar regional mental clinic for further examinations.

The police denied they had any influence on the paramedics’ decisions to place Bisenbay-Tegi in a mental institution.

“It was not the case that Bisenbay-Tegi was deliberately and illegally placed in a medical institution,” it said.

MP Isa said on Friday Bisenbay-Tegi’s treatment was illegal because by law a person who has no previously officially established mental disorder cannot be placed in a mental institution without their consent.

He attributed the incident to “the slavish mentality” developed in Kazakhstan in the Soviet period “when the others [Russians] were seen as better than us”.

Isa called for the adoption of a law on state language that would make knowledge of Kazakh compulsory. “The government must make the state language compulsory,” he said.

He also said that efforts to ensure Bisenbay-Tegi’s release were supported by a group of MPs, which, he said, meant that in the national bodies of power “there are now some decent and responsible people”.

“I am grateful to the people who acted together in order to overcome the difficulty. The people have managed to defend Ruza-apai [elder sister], who is a defender of the Kazakh language,” Isa added.

Bisenbay-Tegi, who is over 60 years old, has long been actively promoting wider use of Kazakh. She has been involved in the so-called language patrols by activists who ‘inspected’ shops and restaurants and other businesses to check if they provided services in Kazakh.

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