Quick Facts
Biography
Igor Sychev is a Kazakh blogger and a political prisoner.He received international attention when he went to prison over an online poll about whether Kazakhstan should join Russia in the same way as Crimea in the Ukraine.
Sychev is an ethnic Russian from a former Russian area in the east of Kazakhstan.It has a majority of ethnic Russian people.Sychev was the administrator of VKontakte, a popular Russian social networking site. On November 18, 2015, he was sentenced to 5 years in prison. Sychev said he did not put up the poll, and he took it down after he received complaints.
Synchev was convicted under a new law, passed in 2015, that prohibits calling for separatism. In January 2017, Sychev's sentence was upheld on appeal.
The International Partnership for Human Rights (IPHR) and Kazakhstan International Bureau for Human Rights and Rule of Law (KIBHR) asked the EU to support Sychev and other victims of free speech violations.