Two prominent labour leaders were released from prison on parole in May 2018, one year after being convicted in retaliation for organising strike action protesting against the dissolution of the Confederation of Independent Trade Unions of Kazakhstan (KNPRK). Amin Yeleusinov, former chair of the trade union at the Kazakhstan Oil Construction Company (OCC), was released from prison in Pavlodar on 22 May following a decision of the local court handed down on 4 May. Nurbek Kushakbayev, deputy chair of the KNPRK and labour inspector of the trade union at the Oil Construction Company (OCC), was released from prison in Pavlodar on 28 May following the 10 May decision of a Pavlodar court to release him from prison on parole.
Kushakbaev and Eleusinov were arrested in January 2017 after hundreds of OCC workers went on a hunger strike to protest the dissolution of the KNPRK. The strike was stopped after a court in Astana declared it illegal. Kushakbayev was sentenced to two and a half years in prison in April 2017 after being convicted for charges of instigating an illegal strike by oil workers. Eleusinov was sentenced to two years in prison in May 2017 on embezzlement charges and for publicly insulting, assaulting and refusing to obey a representative of state authority.
Human rights activists in Kazakhstan and abroad condemned the convictions at the time, calling them politically motivated. Despite the release of the two labour leaders being welcomed by advocacy groups, the original convictions of the two men have not been overturned, and therefore concerns about the oppression of trade union activism in Kazakhstan remain.
