Study of the level of tolerance towards LGBT commumity in Kazakhstan

In January 2016, Youth Public Association AS “AKTIV” (from Ust-Kamenogorsk, Kazakhstan) released the results of their research titled, “Study of The Level of Tolerance towards LGBT-community in Kazakhstan.” This research caused a public response from Kazakhstan’s mass media. It became the source of numerous, mostly negative, articles of countless online-media and print media. In addition, the members of the research group that included Sergey Astafyev (The Chairman of The Board of AS “AKTIV”), Sergey Troyeglazov and two more member of the organization,  started to receive criticism and threats. The following is a summary of the report.

CONTEXTUAL BACKGROUND

In 2014, the lower house of Kazakhstan’s parliament initiated the bill "Gay Propaganda Prohibition among Minors." This law was modeled after the Russian anti-gay law that was adopted June 11, 2013.

Meanwhile (in 2014) in Ust-Kamenogorsk, the anti-gay organization “Okkupay-Pedofilyay” started becoming active. Participants of this group, under the cover of fighting against pedophilia, accosted local representatives of the LGBT community and physically and verbally harassed them, threatened, extorted money, and filmed LGBT events on camera. After a short break, this group resumed their activity in the city in 2015, this time openly declaring their intentions of "eradicating gays from city" in social networks and even giving interviews to local TV channels.[1]

RESEARCH PREMISES

The huge lack of reliable, up-to-date information about the situation of the LGBT-community in the country served as the main premise of the study. Moreover, there was a desire to understand how well Kazakhs citizens acknowledged LGBT people and to reveal the actual level of tolerance of the country’s population.

RESEARCH COURSE AND RESULTS

The study participants were offered to fill in a questionnaire. The first part of the questionnaire consisted of basic questions (age, sex, education, occupation, etc.), which were followed by questions on sexual orientation, level of tolerance, attitude towards LGBT-people and awareness on the subject. 500 respondents from seven cities, including the former and present capitals, Astana and Almaty, took part in the research. Including multiple cities was intentional  to show the difference in people’s mentality  in small and large cities.

The country town Semipalatinsk in East Kazakhstan was the starting point of our research. Only having arrived to the city, without even having begun research yet, we faced a group of young homophobic Kazakhs who were very aggressive towards us. They started shouting offensive statements about our sexual orientation and even threatened to kill us.

According to the research results conducted in this city,  it was revealed that there were very low levels of tolerance to the LGBT community and very high levels of aggression. As for knowledge on who LGBT related issues, residents of Semipalatinsk showed complete ignorance of the subject. In the large cities, the situation appeared to be a little different. Since there are several underground gay nightclubs in Astana and Almaty, which most  citizens are aware of, people have some knowledge about LGBT-community. Nevertheless, only a small percentage of inhabitants expressed a tolerant attitude.

In addition, it is important to note that of the 500 people questioned, only 12 recognized themselves as LGBT, compared to 488 others who referred to themselves as heterosexuals. However, it was obvious that some of the research participants were afraid to reveal their sexual orientation openly.

The most important take-away from the report is that 347 of 500 respondents were aggressive-minded in relation to gays, lesbians, bisexuals, and transsexuals.

For more details, please see the research results attached.