For the past two years, we, journalists, have been feeling massive pressure on the media. Director of Aprel TV channel Dmitry Lozhnikov announced at a meeting of Butun Kyrgyzstan parliamentary faction.
According to him, if earlier pressure was of a targeted nature: individuals with power, including presidents filed multimillion-dollar lawsuits against the media, now this is happening systemically.
«It began with a radical change in the Constitution, and then the adoption of new laws went on. First of all, the law «On protection from false information» was adopted. We saw how it was adopted. And now it is the draft law «On mass media». This is a truly monstrous initiative. All of them are directed against professional journalism, and not against those bloggers and individual users of social media who write nasty things on Facebook and Twitter,» Dmitry Lozhnikov said.
The fifth version of the draft law «On the mass media» was again prepared without taking into account the comments and suggestions of the media community, lawyers and journalists.
Initially, experts from Media Policy Institute and Adilet Legal Clinic, after analyzing the draft law, emphasized that it significantly restricts the rights to freedom of speech, information and the media. An active discussion of the document led to the formation of a working group to finalize the draft law. It was created by order of the head of state on December 7, 2022. Its term of work ended on May 15, 2023.
