On Thursday, October 10, a court sentenced four journalists and collaborators to Temirov liveone of the last independent media outlets in Kyrgyzstan, for “inciting mass unrest.” A verdict that confirms the decline of public freedoms in this country once considered a democratic island in Central Asia.
Eleven personalities linked directly or indirectly to this editorial team, whose video investigations revealed the corruption of the regime’s ruling elites, appeared in court, nine months after their sudden arrest by the police. On October 2, the NGO Amnesty International called for the charges to be dropped, considering that “these accusations [n’étaient] nothing more than a politically motivated attempt to repress freedom of expression and punish journalists for their work.”.
According to observers, this wave of arrests was part of a campaign of intimidation directed against the media outlet’s founder, Bolot Temirov. The bête noire of the regime, the journalist is today exiled in an undisclosed location in Europe, after having been deprived of his citizenship and expelled from the country.
“A drift towards authoritarianism”
His wife, journalist and activist Makhabat Tazhibek Kyzy, was sentenced on Thursday to six years in prison, in particular for having exposed corruption by the authorities in a video. “in force for thirty years”. The courts decided to place her eleven-year-old son in an orphanage while she serves her sentence.
The poet and rapper Azamat Ishenbekov, who transmitted the revelations of Temirov live For his songs, he was sentenced to five years in prison. Two other journalists, Aktilek Kaparov and Aike Beishekeyeva, were released after a suspended sentence, while the other seven defendants, who had been under house arrest for several months, were acquitted.
“This is a fundamental turning point for the independent press in Kyrgyzstan”reacts Jeanne Cavelier, head of the Reporters Without Borders (RSF) office for Eastern Europe and Central Asia, who sees it this way. “a flagrant drift of Kyrgyz power towards authoritarianism”. “This verdict is not surprising given Kyrgyzstan’s track record in recent years, but it is extremely disappointing as the Kyrgyz public is deprived of truthful information and journalism is criminalized.”says Drew Sullivan, editorial director of the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, a consortium of investigative journalists that includes Temirov live He is a partner.
Until recently, Kyrgyzstan had a vibrant media scene and civil society. But the noose has tightened in recent years under the leadership of its president, Sadyr Japarov, who combines populist rhetoric with control methods reminiscent of Vladimir Putin’s Russia. In February, the courts had already ordered the closure of another independent media outlet, loopwhile the previous year the country had lost fifty places in RSF’s world press freedom ranking. The country is also preparing to strengthen the law on defamation, to severely punish the authors of“abuse” and of “fake news”.
