Kyrgyzstan Adopts New, Draconian Media Law

Kyrgyzstan’s President Sadyr Japarov signed on August 7 a media law that expands state control over independent outlets, Reuters reported.

The new law requires all media outlets, including online platforms, to register with government agencies. In addition, the law limits the share of foreign ownership to 35%.

According to Kloop, an independent media outlet in the country, the requirement for mandatory registration was added to the law last minute.

“Before this, the parliament was debating over a ‘compromise’ version of the law, developed for several years together with the media community and lawyers. In the earlier version, media registration was voluntary,” Kloop wrote in a statement.

Now, the procedure for registration, re-registration, and refusal to register media will be established by the Cabinet of Ministers in a separate provision.

“That is, it is the government that will decide which media outlets will operate and which will not,” Kloop explained.

The draft media law has been in the works since 2022 and has been criticized by journalists, civil society, and human rights organizations from the outset.

“Kyrgyzstan’s parliament should reject a Russia-style ‘foreign agents bill’ that poses a grave threat to nongovernmental organizations’ activities across the country,” read a statement from January last year undersigned by Human Rights Watch, Civil Rights Defenders, International Partnership for Human Rights (IPHR), the Norwegian Helsinki Committee, People in Need, the Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights, as well as the International Federation for Human Rights and the World Organization against Torture.

In the statement, the human rights organizations called on Kyrgyz authorities to refrain from implementing the draft media law in its current format, since its adoption would significantly expand state control over media outlets and give the authorities broad powers to deny them registration, obstruct their work, and close them.

Since Japarov came to power in late 2020, pressure on independent media in Kyrgyzstan has increased sharply.

In January last year, the National Security Committee (GKNB) conducted a search of the office of the well-known online publication 24.kg, and the editor-in-chief and CEO were taken into custody and interrogated on charges of “war propaganda” in connection with their coverage of Russia’s war against Ukraine.

Soon after, the police searched the office of the publication Temirov Live, which is owned by blogger and journalist Bolot Temirov. Eleven journalists who worked for the publication, as well as Temirov’s wife, were detained.

In May of this year, searches and detentions of former and current employees of the publication Kloop took place. On August 5, a trial began in Bishkek against former Kloop videographers Alexander Alexandrov and Zhoomart Duulatov, as well as two accountants of the editorial office, they are accused of “calling for mass unrest.”

Japarov also recently approved penalties for spreading “false information,” imposing fines of up to 65,000 soms ($740) on media outlets. Rights groups have warned that the measures violate international free speech standards.