In the West, opposition to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine is the norm, but in the East, supporting Ukraine can land journalists in jail.
On March 3, 2022, Kyrgyz authorities raided the office of Next TV, an opposition television channel located in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan. They seized equipment, arrested the General Director and owner before closing and sealing the station. In the days that followed, a number of the former employees and journalists of the channel were called for questioning by the Kyrgyz intelligence service.
The charge? “Inciting inter-ethnic hatred.”
The crime? Next TV’s Instagram channel had shared a post from UkraineNow, a Ukrainian news source, that read, in Russian, “The former head of the Kazakh KGB, A. Musaev says that at a confidential level, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan expressed their willingness to provide Russia with military assistance.”
Those found guilty of violating the statute of “incitement” face seven years of imprisonment.
Kyrgyzstan is far from being known as a bastion of free speech and human rights. On a rubric of 100 points relating to political rights and civil liberties, Freedom House’s Freedom in the World report gave Kyrgyzstan a score of 26, meaning “not free.” Likewise, the Heritage Foundation’s annual ranking gave the landlocked nation a score of “mostly unfree” in its 2022 Index of Economic Freedom.
The owner of the station, Ravshan Djeyenbekov (no relationship to Kyrgyz President Sooronbay Djeyenbekov), told the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) that the arrests came after several months of pressure from Kyrgyz authorities to close the station.
Perizat Saitburkhan, a former journalist for Next TV, hypothesized that the Instagram post was a “mere pretext” to shutter Next TV and that the outlet had been targeted due to its critical reporting. A further factor is understood to be the channel’s rebroadcast across the country of material from the U.S. Congress-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty service Radio Azattyk which, according to Saitburkhan, the current Kyrgyz leadership “strongly dislikes.” RFE/RL are known to publish materials that often differ with the Kremlin narrative regarding the war in Ukraine.
The non-governmental organization Human Rights Watch issued a statement indicating that the attack on Next TV was not unique, as “Kyrgyzstan authorities have stepped up the harassment of journalists and independent media with a slew of criminal investigations into their work in recent months.” This was echoed by the Norwegian Helsinki Commission which wrote that “authorities in Kyrgyzstan must immediately reverse the unfounded closure of independent media outlet Next TV and free or otherwise credibly charge its director, Taalaibek Duishenbiev.”
As the criminal investigation continues, General Director Taalaibek Duishenbiev remains in jail – something that Mr. Djeyenbekov told the Kyiv Post is a major worry. Mr. Djeyenbekov, who was jailed twice before for his democratic opposition to the Kyrgyz Government, acknowledges that he knew about the risks when he decided to attempt a free media channel in Kyrgyzstan, but that he felt compelled to keep the station running due to his “support for the free press and his strong opposition to Putin, corruption within Kyrgyzstan and authoritarianism.”
Mr. Djeyenbekov, who earlier served as an opposition Member of Parliament and Ambassador before he obtained his Master’s in Business Administration (MBA) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), described the situation by saying: “No matter how severe the challenges I face, I know that I must be strong and defend what is right. If I do not speak up now for the free press, or if I were to abandon my fight by making a deal with the Prosecutor’s Office, I would be abandoning what I have fought for my entire life.”
He continued: “If we look at the situation today in Ukraine, “it’s clear that Putin’s evil knows no limits. That’s why I have been openly against [Putin] for two decades already. Anyone who sees the terrible human rights abuses in Ukraine – a total tragedy – and does not react by saying that ‘Putin is a threat to world peace,’ is lost.”
However, the belief that Putin is “evil” is undoubtedly a minority opinion in Kyrgyzstan, a member of the Moscow-lead Eurasian Customs Union (along with Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Armenia) and which famously named a mountain in the Ala-Too chain “Vladimir Putin Peak.”
On Thursday, Kyrgyzstan was one of 24 countries to vote against suspending Russia from the Human Rights Commission of the United Nations. This came as no surprise given Kyrgyzstan’s strong economic dependency on Russia. According to the World Bank’s 2020 data, 31% of Kyrgyzstan’s GDP comes from remittances which almost wholly originate from Kyrgyz citizens working in labor intensive jobs in Russia.
A 2011 poll prior to Kyrgyzstan joining the Eurasian Customs Union (undertaken by an American Government financed NGO in Kyrgyzstan) found that 96% of Kyrgyz viewed relations with Russia as “good” and only 1% saw them as “bad”. This coincided with 94% who believed Russia to be a “positive” influence on the development of democracy in Kyrgyzstan, in sharp contrast to 19% who said the same about the United States. Perhaps more staggeringly, 63% said that the Kyrgyz Republic should consider “joining” the Russian Federation, a slight drop on the earlier high of 75% who expressed this sentiment.
When presented with the data for comment, Djeyenbekov responded: “Well, this is what happens when the television broadcast network in Kyrgyzstan consists primarily of Russian TV stations like ORT, RTR, NTV, etc. This is precisely why we need a free press and liberal opposition TV. And it is precisely why they want to put us in jail.”
Jason Jay Smart, Kyiv Post Special Correspondent
