Stacy Dallman, wife of Barys Astana ice hockey team star Kevin Dallman, is reporting on her blog Adventures in Kaziland, that she has been refused a Kazakhstan visa after living in the country for four years.
Her blog took a look at life in Kazakhstan and didn’t flinch from criticising problems such as the endemic corruption in the country. After pressure from her husband’s agent, she was forced to remove a post from her blog in March 2012.
If you are wondering where the last post went…. well….Kevins agent made me delete it! Well the agent is blaming it on the team, the team is blaming it on the owner of the team, the owner of the team is blaming it on the president of the country. I’m not quite sure if the president of any country would have enough time on his or her hands to worry about one little blog that less than 100 people read per day…but that’s their story and they are sticking to it.
What’s got into Astana that it’s running scared of a blogger getting 100 hits a day? Have recent moves to stifle dissent within the country now been extended to foreigners?
With its new three-party parliament Kazakhstan likes to present itself as a democracy, but it takes more than a sham parliament to make a true democracy with a functioning civil society.
Not only has Kazakhstan lost a critical blogging voice, but Barys Astana has also lost its star defender as Kevin Dallman’s contract, which had another three years to run, has now been terminated.
Stacy Dallman signed off with the following
I’m done.
No more blogs about Kazakhstan.
I leave behind some of the most intelligent, discerning young people who are poised to become the next leaders of a historically repressed country that I am confident has the desire and ambition to overcome it’s problems.
My expulsion from the country only verifies each and every point that I have witnessed over the past four years spent in Astana.
Tags: Adventures in Kaziland, Barys Astana, Kazakhstan Blogger refused visa, Kevin Dallman, Stacy Dallman
Kazaxia 