A court in Almaty has declared the channel's work "illegal" and ordered it to stop broadcasts across Kazakhstan, said Adil Soz, a local press freedom group that published the December 6 decision on its website. The same court on December 4 ordered the closure of Stan.tv, a web-based opposition channel. Kazakhstan's prosecutor general had last month called for the closure of several media outlets including K-Plus, claiming they promoted regime change and disseminated extremist messages during the Zhanaozen protests. K-Plus's reports maintained that the Zhanaozen violence began when police drove a bus into a sit-in by oil-workers to disperse their peaceful rally for better working conditions.
It blamed policemen for opening fire on the unarmed crowd, which included children, and said that the official death toll was lower than the real number of casualties. Both K-Plus and Stan.tv are critical of President Nursultan Nazarbayev and frequently feature interviews with his biggest foe, exiled former top official Mukhtar Ablyazov.