In Aktas, an isolated settlement about 40 kilometers northeast of Almaty, stands the Republican Psychiatric Hospital with Intensive Supervision.
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The fortified complex, built on the western edge of a vast industrial area filled with mines and quarries, is the only high-security psychiatric institution of its kind in Kazakhstan.
Kazakhstan’s Health Ministry says more than 80 percent of those admitted there have committed “serious crimes against others.” They are held at the institution under a court-ordered compulsory medical treatment regime.
Until now, little information about what happens inside the walls of the Aktas hospital has been available to the public.
Discussion intensified recently after a former patient posted several videos on social media, including secretly recorded interviews. The material was later provided to Azattyq, RFE/RL’s Kazakh Service. Some of the footage has been published on social media, while several of the videos obtained by Azattyq are new.
The person who provided the recordings, a former patient, asked RFE/RL not to disclose his identity. Most of the people he interviewed, however, identified themselves by name in the videos. He said he had been at the hospital from 2022 until February of this year and that the material had been filmed during 2025–2026. RFE/RL has not been able to independently verify when the recordings were made.
One after another, the patients interviewed described remarkably similar experiences of what they claim they were forced to endure.
Ruslan Kemelov said staff tied him to a bed after he refused to obey an order. According to him, he was then given an injection without his consent.
When asked why he had been tied to the bed, Kemelov gave a brief answer: “I refused to wash the sink.”
Citing medical confidentiality, the hospital declined to comment specifically on Kemelov’s case.
Other former patients gave similar accounts. Samat Sattarov described the effects of being forcibly given an antipsychotic medication and the physical restraint that he said followed.
“After the decanoate, a person can neither walk, sit nor lie down normally. The whole body is in a state of torture. Imagine: I was tied to a bed for ten days,” he said.
Alisher Karimov, another patient, also described how frequently he claims he was given injections.
“Six injections a day—I received 60 injections in ten days. Even worse is that they tie you to the bed. You remain tied there for ten full days and cannot move. They do not even untie you to let you go to the toilet. You have to relieve yourself where you are,” Karimov said.
Sattarov believes this form of treatment is used to frighten patients and force them into submission.
“After all these ‘executions,’ a person completely loses the will to live. You can no longer think normally; you become like a vegetable,” he said.
Human rights organizations say involuntary detention on mental health grounds should be permitted only in exceptional circumstances clearly defined by law. Such a measure should be based on an assessment by qualified health professionals that the person poses a serious and immediate danger to themselves or someone else.
Elena Semenova, a human rights activist who received some of the videos, said the patients’ testimony requires a serious investigation.
“This is the suppression of a person’s will, instilling fear in them to achieve a desired result and forcing them to perform certain actions. This is torture,” Semenova said.
In the filmed interviews, the patients spoke not only about physical restraints. They claimed they were constantly forced to perform manual labor necessary for the institution’s operation and that getting out of the hospital was extremely difficult. According to their testimony, release could be secured only through complete obedience to staff.
In one of the videos, a patient is seen cleaning toilets by hand without gloves. Asked why he was doing the work, he said: “To be released from the hospital.”
When asked whether staff had told him directly that he would not be released if he resisted, he replied: “Yes, yes.”
Another patient said he had been ordered to work at a garbage dump, where, according to him, the entire waste-processing operation was carried out by patients.
“If you say you will not go, they put you in the observation ward and give you injections,” he said.
The patients’ allegations were also supported by former employees of the institution.
“They force them to wash the toilets and sinks. They force them,” said Baizhan Sagyndykov, who previously worked at the hospital.
He added: “If patients say anything about wanting to defend their rights, they threaten them, saying: ‘I will tie you up, I will give you injections,’ and that they will take other measures as well. I am telling you this based on what I personally saw.”
Nagima Nurbekova, another former employee, said even patients who could barely walk were forced to work. According to her, those who resisted were tied up and given injections.
The hospital rejected the forced labor allegations in its response to RFE/RL. The institution said patients do not perform staff duties and that cleaning, maintenance and kitchen work are carried out by employees.
The hospital’s director, Dulatbek Dauylbekov, also denied that physical restraints were used as punishment.
“Physical restraint measures are used only when medically indicated and are not used as punishment or a disciplinary measure,” Dauylbekov said. He insisted that the intervention is used only as a last resort and when there is a direct threat of violence.
Some of the most serious allegations concern Ward No. 9, which patients and former employees describe as one of the hospital’s harshest sections.
Former patient Alexey Alekseev said he had seen another patient, Yuri Prikhodchenko, repeatedly restrained by force and given large doses of medication.
“For ten days, the person is forced to relieve himself where he is because they do not untie him at all. He endures terrible suffering. I am speaking openly about this because I experienced it myself,” Alekseev said.
Patient Timur Nauanov also spoke about Prikhodchenko.
“Prikhodchenko is currently in Ward No. 9, the tuberculosis ward, even though he does not have tuberculosis. They put him there deliberately because he had begun speaking openly about his rights and freedoms. I fear for my health and my life because there have been cases of patients dying, and not just once,” Nauanov said.
In his official response to RFE/RL, the hospital director denied that such a ward is currently operating, although patients described its location in detail.
Kazakhstan’s sanitary authorities provided an account that contradicts the director’s statement. They confirmed that the institution has a 60-bed ward for tuberculosis patients, as well as an isolation room for people suspected of having the disease.
In addition to denying the existence of Ward No. 9, the hospital declined to provide information about the patients allegedly being held there. The institution cited medical confidentiality and did not provide information even to patients’ relatives.
Olga Petrova, Prikhodchenko’s mother, told RFE/RL that she has repeatedly encountered difficulties contacting the hospital and has often not even been allowed to see her son.
“I have no idea what is happening or what is being done to my son,” Petrova said.
During their last meeting, which was brief, Prikhodchenko managed to tell his mother that his medication doses had been drastically increased after a new ward supervisor was appointed. Not long afterward, Petrova learned that her son had seriously injured himself.
“He cannot speak. Of course he cannot. If he tells the truth…” she said.
The accounts of patients and former patients have also raised suspicions about deaths and cases of self-harm inside the hospital.
According to the institution’s official data, only one patient death was recorded in the first half of 2026. The hospital also said that most patient deaths were linked to cardiovascular diseases.
The institution acknowledged, however, that 10 cases in which patients seriously injured themselves had been officially recorded over the past 18 months. Staff did not clarify whether these were suicide attempts or what medical consequences the incidents had caused.
Sattarov, who said he had witnessed several cases of self-harm during his stay at the hospital, called for the statistics to be independently verified.
“The statistics simply need to be checked: how many patients died and what the real causes were,” he said.
Following the publication of the allegations, several state institutions launched investigations.
The Talgar District Prosecutor’s Office announced that it had reviewed the videos published on social media and launched comprehensive inspections. The inspections concern the legality of medical care, compliance with sanitary standards and the overall quality of services provided at the institution.
Internal investigations have also been opened by Kazakhstan’s Health Ministry and the Commissioner for Human Rights.
After the videos emerged, Beksultan Dildabekuly, the ombudsman’s representative in the Almaty region, issued a strong warning.
“The use of these measures as a means of punishment, pressure or coercion is absolutely prohibited by law,” he said. /RFE/RL
