The Bishkek City Court considered the petition of Azattyk Media to invalidate the decision of the Ministry of Culture, Information, Sports and Youth Policy on blocking its websites. Azattyk reported the details.
Azattyk Media’s lawyers declared at the hearing that the Ministry of Culture’s decision to block websites was illegal and asked to cancel the decision of the Bishkek Administrative Court.
The judicial panel, chaired by the judge Bolotbek Satybaldiev, did not satisfy the petition of Azattyk Media and upheld the decision of the previous instance.
Lawyer Akmat Alagushev noted that the blocking of the media outlet’s websites was accompanied by a violation of the law, which was not taken into account by the Administrative Court when making the decision. According to the lawyer, when blocking the websites, the Ministry of Culture also violated the norms of the law on protection against inaccurate (false) information, to which the ministry refers.
Representatives of the ministry noted that the websites are still blocked due to the fact that the material about the armed clash on the Kyrgyz-Tajik border has not been removed.
Lawyers of Azattyk Media intend to appeal the decision of the Bishkek City Court to a higher court.
On April 27 the judge of the Leninsky District Court of Bishkek Cholpon Karimbaeva satisfied the claim of the Ministry of Culture, Information, Sports and Youth Policy on the closure of Azattyk Media.
At the end of October, the Ministry of Culture, Information, Sports and Youth Policy of Kyrgyzstan announced that it had suspended the operation of Radio Azattyk website for two months. The ministry noted that on September 16, the Current Time resource (subordinate structure of Azattyk Media) published a video entitled «Heavy fighting on the border of Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan», in which «elements of hate speech, unconfirmed information about the alleged attack by the Kyrgyz side on Tajikistan were used, as well as information that aggravates the situation in society and causes hatred, discrimination and division among citizens when covering events in Batken region.»
Kyrgyzstan’s media community has expressed its concern over the Kyrgyz government’s continued harassment of independent journalists and attempts to restrict media freedom, saying that the ministry should withdraw the lawsuit.
As the human rights activists note, Kyrgyz authorities have recently increased efforts to control and censor mass media amid a continued crackdown on freedom of expression and civil society.
