“This is pressure against the media through the judicial system,” Tokbergen Abiev, owner and editor-in-chief of the newspaper, told RFE/RL's Kazakh Service. He said the court's decision is meant to intimidate the country's independent media.

The ruling, announced Thursday, is being appealed by the newspaper, according to RadioFreeEurope.

The Astana interregional economic court is using a mix-up between two different companies under the same name to base the charges on, Abiev said. The newspaper and another company are both called Law and Justice, and the newspaper has no factual errors in its registration, he said. “We always report about the activities of judges, about illegal rulings, and violations of the rights to citizens,” which is why the court is targeting his paper for closure, Abiev said, according to RadioFreeEurope's report.

Zhumabike Zhunusova, a journalist at independent newspaper Svoboda slova, said judges should take the newspaper to court if they feel they have been libelled.

“This is not slander, this is criticism,” Zhunosva said. “If this was slander, why didn't (the authorities) bring a case to court? This is an example that shows that freedom of speech is under fire in this country.”