In Kyrgyzstan, an ongoing crackdown on the free press appears to have taken an even more draconian turn, with entire newsrooms being dismantled and serious journalism effectively criminalised.
The crackdown has seen legal attacks launched on journalists — some of which is the stuff of farce.
This week in the capital of Bishkek, four former staffers from OCCRP member centre Kloop, one of the last remaining independent outlets in Kyrgyzstan, went on trial, accused of conspiring to “incite mass unrest.”
Witnesses declined to back the prosecution’s allegations. “No one gave incriminating testimony, although they are presented as prosecution witnesses,” said legal expert Nurbek Toktakunov, who attended the hearing. “Why they are called that is unclear.”
The defendants are two accountants and two cameramen, and all four have pleaded guilty — despite their lawyers and Kloop insisting the case against them is built on a false premise.
A Kloop lawyer who reviewed the indictment against the four — which was kept under wraps for weeks and not shared with the public until just before the trial opened — said much of the case revolves around five videos critical of the government, which prosecutors say the cameramen helped to produce.
However, those videos were never published by Kloop — they appeared on Temirov Live, another investigative outlet dismantled in a crackdown a year earlier, which now operates from exile in a limited capacity. The senior leadership of Kloop is now in exile, too.
“The criminal prosecution is not linked to specific stories,” said Kloop co-founder Rinat Tukhvatshin. “In our case, there is not a single story in the indictment that was published on Kloop. […] Kyrgyz authorities are simply finding any way to cause maximum harm to the media, the organization, and the people associated with it”
