The Ombudsman of Kyrgyzstan considers the right of citizens to peaceful assembly to express their position as fundamental. Atyr Abdrakhmatova said it today at the round table discussion «Ensuring the constitutional rights of citizens to peaceful assembly».
According to her, there is a judicial ban on rallies, and nobody can get away from it, and if Kyrgyzstan is positioning itself as a legal state, these decisions must be executed.
«But how to try to overturn them, to restore the violated rights? If all national mechanisms are exhausted, citizens will be forced to appeal to international institutions. Therefore, it is necessary to hold discussions, discuss the problem and look for ways to resolve it. We must not forget that peaceful assemblies are the fundamental right of citizens,» the human rights activist said.
She was supported by the leader of the parliamentary faction Butun Kyrgyzstan Adakhan Madumarov. He added that citizens need to more actively defend their constitutional rights and pointed to the legal nihilism of representatives of law enforcement agencies.
The head of Kylym Shamy human rights center Gulshaiyr Abdirasulova emphasized that the law on peaceful assemblies, adopted in Kyrgyzstan, is recognized as the best in the world, and the neighboring states — Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan want the same document.
According to her, the right to free assembly is not absolute, it can be limited, which must be justified and cannot be imposed on all rallies, but only on some specific ones, whose participants put forward extremist demands and such actions are not peaceful in nature.
Participants of a rally in support of Ukraine were detained in Maksim Gorky park on April 2. About 20 people were taken to the Department of Internal Affairs of Pervomaisky district. They were released later; the police did not find a corpus delicti in their actions.
Earlier it was reported that the courts of Bishkek banned rallies in support of Ukraine or Russia. Later the ban was extended to all rallies. It is now allowed to hold rallies only in the Gorky park.
