Global Journalist

20 Years Later: Kyrgyzstan

By Elena Chadova Posted Apr 13 2010

Home / Recent Stories / 20 Years Later: Kyrgyzstan

In the latter days of President Askar Akaev, who was ousted by a popular uprising in 2005, I covered a pompous investment summit held on the shore of Lake Issyk-Kul in eastern Kyrgyzstan as a reporter for Times of Central Asia. Despite the ambitious reforms the country had carried out in the first decade since its independence, poverty persisted, and the president was rapidly losing popularity.

Akaev attempted to solve the problem by appealing to foreign investors, while the press increasingly pointed to the heart of the issue — corruption and nepotism in the government. Instead of taking heed, Akaev’s administration employed draconian measures to silence the dissenting voices.

Having initially allowed independent media to develop freely, President Akaev was viewed as a liberal in the West. Throughout the 1990s, Kyrgyzstan boasted the title of an “island of democracy” amid authoritarian rule and instability in Central Asia. But the media’s honeymoon with the republic’s first president was short-lived.

Akaev did little to change a restrictive media law of 1992. Because the judiciary remained dependent on the executive branch, silencing the media was a matter of simply filing a lawsuit. Damages awarded in such suits were exorbitant, and by 2003, several independent newspapers had to file for bankruptcy. Res Publica’s Editor-in-Chief Zamira Sydykova, the most outspoken critic of President Akaev in the 1990s, was sentenced to 18 months in prison in 1997. The largest printing press in the country, state-owned Uchkun, repeatedly refused to print issues of dissenting newspapers. The only broadcaster able to reach audiences everywhere in the republic, Kyrgyz Television and Radio network, served as a mouthpiece for the Kyrgyz government.

The year 2003 became a watershed as it prepared the ground for the upcoming—and inevitable—public uprising. Independent newspaper Moya Stolitsa–Novosti was forced to close down, facing 34 libel lawsuits filed since 2002. It reopened shortly after as MSN. The body of Kyrgyz Rukhu reporter Ernis Nazalov, then 26, was pulled out of a river in southern Kyrgyzstan that same year. Although the autopsy showed Nazalov was stabbed and beaten, the prosecutor attributed his death to “accidental drowning.”

On the brighter side for the Kyrgyz media, Freedom House sponsored the opening of the country’s only independent printing press in 2003.

Akaev was ousted as a result of mass protests after a fraudulent Parliamentary election in 2005. When opposition leader Kurmanbek Bakiev was sworn in as Kyrgyzstan’s new president, many people thought this was the triumph of the media that refused to be intimidated by the heavy-handed state.

Unfortunately, President Bakiev’s honeymoon with Kyrgyzstan’s media proved even shorter than that of his predecessor. Bakiev’s promises to change the restrictive media law and reform Kyrgyz Television and Radio network into an independent public broadcaster never produced any action.

If anything, the prospects for press freedom in Kyrgyzstan today appear as bleak as ever. All media still have to register with the Ministry of Justice. Libel remains a criminal offense, punishable by up to three years in prison. Self-censorship thrives. While the online media enjoy relative freedom, only about 15 percent of the population has access to the Internet, according to a recent Internet World Stats poll.

The situation today reminds me of the twilight of Akaev’s rule. In the past three years, the number of assaults on journalists has risen sharply. According to independent sources, more than 60 such incidents have taken place since 2005. The Ministry of Internal Affairs offers a lower figure—31—and, according to Minister Moldomusa Kongantiev, most of the incidents were not related to the journalists’ work. With the recent murders of journalists Alisher Saipov (2007), Almazbek Tashiev (2009) and Gennady Pavlyuk (also 2009), Kyrgyzstan’s bumpy road to press freedom appears to be leading in the wrong direction.

It was amid widespread assaults on the press that I was listening to President Akaev list the alleged democratic achievements of independent Kyrgyzstan. I was the only reporter at the investment summit whose trip was not paid for by the presidential press service.

President Akaev’s misunderstanding of the power of democracy proved fatal for his political career. One can only hope President Bakiev will realize—and soon—that he is sitting on a powder keg.

Up-to-date information about the political situation in Kyrgyzstan can be found at the writer’s blog or a following article