The Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) is deeply concerned by the Kyrgyz government’s mounting assault on press freedom. The organization said in its statement.
As OCCRP notes, just within the last few weeks, OCCRP fellow Bolot Temirov was arrested on trumped up drug charges, anonymous Facebook pages released private documents seized from his computers, and his employee was blackmailed with a compromising video.
In addition, earlier this month the government launched a criminal case against another independent outlet, Kaktus.media, alleging «war propaganda» for republishing a story by a Tajik outlet about a recent border conflict between the two countries.
Most recently, four pro-government activists, supported by a former member of parliament, held a press conference calling for the adoption of a «foreign agent law» and its use against independent outlets like Kloop and Radio Azattyk.
The press conference was funded by a former member of parliament, Tursunbai Bakir Uulu, who has long been a proponent of «foreign agent» legislation. The speakers repeatedly called on Kyrgyzstan’s parliament to adopt a foreign agent law and encouraged public protests against the independent media outlets.
As the organization says, pressure against independent media in Kyrgyzstan is not new: Temirov was surveilled in his apartment last year, and Kloop journalists have been threatened by allies of a former official they had reported on.
But the latest developments — combined with the introduction of a new «false information» law that has been condemned by human rights groups — signal a dangerous and worrisome turn in a country that has been known as the most democratic in the region.
OCCRP
In fact, Kyrgyzstan had made a notable jump in Reporters Sans Frontiers’ 2019 World Press Freedom Index — progress that is now in jeopardy.
«Independent media in Kyrgyzstan has made great strides and investments in the past decade,» said OCCRP Publisher Drew Sullivan. «This government is in power because of the heroic actions of independent media in the 2020 parliamentary election. It’s horribly dystopian that this government is the one that would seek to crush it.»
