Kyrgyzstan on the Path to Dictatorship

News:

Regime in Kyrgyzstan decided to finally put an end to independent journalism. Thus, on January 15, State Committee for National Security officers conducted searches in the office of the 24.kg online-portal, confiscating equipment and detaining the general director Asel Otorbaeva, as well as the chief editors Makhinur Niyazova and Anton Lymar. On January 16, Ministry of Internal Affairs officers conducted a search in the Temirov Live office, confiscated equipment, and also arrested 11 current and former employees and searched their houses. After interrogations, 11 of the 14 detainees were placed in a pre-trial detention center for two months. Journalists from the 24.kg agency are accused of allegedly “war propaganda,” and security forces are trying to prosecute current and former employees of investigator Bolot Temirov’s projects for “calling for mass unrest.”

Bolot Temirov is a human rights activist from Kyrgyzstan and a well-known journalist, corruption investigator, founder of the YouTube channel “Temirov LIVE”, within which investigations about corruption schemes in government agencies of Kyrgyzstan were published. In 2022, authorities raided Temirov Live's office and deported Temirov from Russia, even though he is a native of Kyrgyzstan. Bolot Temirov considers the detention of his former and current employees as retaliation for investigative journalists who published his projects. “Taking into account that employees who have not worked for us for a year and a half have been detained, we can say that the goal is the complete destruction of everything connected with Temirov Live and Ait Ait Dese.” Two years ago they also thought that their actions were destroying our team. But they failed. Now it looks more like revenge for the fact that we reveal their lies and show the truth”, - Temirov believes.

Comment:

As for the 24.kg portal, the real reason for its persecution may be related to its coverage of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine: in September 2023, Russian authorities blocked access to the portal on their territory due to its reporting on this war.

Sadyr Japarov methodically acts according to the scenario already worked out by Putin in Russia to strengthen his power and transfer the country into a dictatorship - organizing a war, destroying independent media, arresting political opponents, the so-called, the fight against “terrorism” and the subsequent strengthening of the Special Services. And this is not surprising: various sources have long reported that Moscow sent Russian political strategists to Japarov to “restore order” in Kyrgyzstan, ensuring Russian stable control over it through an enslaved president.

Written for the Central Media Office of Hizb ut Tahrir by
Muhammad Mansour