Kyrgyzstan

The Committee to Protect Journalists has expressed alarm at Bishkek City Court's refusal to open a new investigation into the case of Azimjon Askarov, a journalist and human rights defender who has been imprisoned in Kyrgyzstan since 2010 in retaliation for his work exposing wrongdoing. The court scrapped today an earlier decision by a lower Bishkek court, which had ruled that the journalist's...

Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has deplored the June 20 physical attack by demonstrators on three TV journalists who were covering a rally in support of the Kyrgyz nationalist party Ata-Zhurt in the southern city of Osh. It again highlighted the dangers to which journalists are exposed in Kyrgyzstan as well as police bias against the media. The violence occurred...

Kyrgyz parliament adopted a resolution June 16 issuing a legally binding instruction to the prosecutor-general’s office, culture ministry and justice ministry to block access to the independent online news agency Ferghana ( www.ferghananews.com) because of its coverage of last year’s violence in the south of the country. “Blocking access to Ferghana would constitute a very shocking attack on one...

The trial of three people accused of killing Kyrgyz journalist Gennady Pavlyuk in the Kazakh capital of Almaty in December 2009 by throwing him from the 6th floor of a building opened two days ago in Almaty. At the time of his death, Pavlyuk had been given the job of creating a news website and a weekly newspaper for the Kyrgyz opposition party Ata-Meken. “The decision to hold an open trial at the...

There has been a new wave of threats and physical attacks on journalists during the past few weeks in both Bishkek, the capital, and the southern city of Osh, according to Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF). “Harassment and self-censorship are growing, in an explosive atmosphere of ethnic tension,” RSF said. “No serious investigation has been carried out into any of...

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has expressed alarm at reports that Kyrgyz journalist Azimjon Askarov has been beaten repeatedly in custody. On Wednesday, an appeals court in the southern Jalal-Abad region upheld the life sentence given in September to Azimjon Askarov, a reporter, researcher, and head of the local human rights group Vozdukh, and six of his co-defendants, the Moscow...

Human rights reporter Azimjon Askarov was sentenced to life imprisonment by a court in Jalal-Abad region, southern Kyrgyzstan, on Wednesday, New York-based press freedom group Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has reported. Judge Nurgazy Alimbayev pronounced Askarov guilty on a wide range of charges, including complicity to commit homicide and murder of a police officer (two separate counts...

Trumped-up charges of extremism have been pressed in Kyrgyzstan against Ulugbek Abdusalomov, the editor of an independent newspaper, and Azimjon Askarov, a journalist and human rights defender, according to press freedom group Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). Prosecutors in the southern city of Jalal-Abad charged Abdusalomov, editor of the Uzbek-language newspaper Diydor, and Askarov, head...

The provisional government in Kyrgyzstan has taken over all of the country’s TV stations and is busy nationalising them. Osh TV, an Uzbek language station based in Osh, the capital of southern Kyrgyzstan, is a case in point. The government has acquired a controlling interest in its shares and has arbitrarily fired its director, Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has reported. All of the country’s...

A raid was carried on the newsroom of the independent Uzbek-language broadcaster Osh TV in the southern Kyrgyz city of Osh on Friday, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). The Kyrgyz security service (known as SNB) also temporarily detained director Khalil Khudaiberdiyev in the raid on the station. Osh TV is currently off the air, the Uzbek service of the US government-funded...