An American researcher Edward Lemon posted on Twitter excerpts from his study, which says that 79 percent of the laws of Kyrgyzstan on terrorism and extremism were copied from their Russian analogs.

He used a special program for analysis and found out that Kyrgyzstan leads among the countries of Central Asia in terms of the number of copied laws on terrorism and extremism. Tajikistan takes the second place — 56 percent, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan — 4 and 5 percent respectively.

Edward Lemon outlined that he conducted a comparative analysis of the legislation of Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan dated 2005, Uzbekistan — 2018, and Tajikistan — 2003. It turned out that the regulatory legal acts were copied from the Russian ones, which were adopted in 2002.

At least 245 people are serving sentences in prisons of Kyrgyzstan for terrorism and extremism, other 215 convicts — in penal settlements.

Dr. Edward Lemon is a research fellow at the Daniel Morgan Graduate School of National Security and a fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. Previously, he received doctoral scholarship of Andrew Mellon at the Harriman Institute (Columbia University). In 2016, he received a doctorate degree in international studies at University of Exeter.

Lemon’s researches focus on the study of terrorism, authoritarianism, religion, security and migration in Eurasia. Since 2009, he has been collecting data in Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Russia and Poland for three years.