NEXT TV, a private TV channel of Kyrgyzstan, is charged under article 330 (“Incitement of racial, ethnic, national, religious, interregional hatred (discord)” of the Criminal Code of the Kyrgyz Republic. The media suspended broadcasting, director Taalai Duishembiev was detained for two months, employees are called in for questioning to GKNB.
Investigation is underway
According to Omurbek Sataev, producer of NEXT TV channel, employees of the TV channel receive summons to GKNB. On March 7, two journalists and the accountant of the company were questioned.
“Each of us was questioned for three hours. They invited our accountant. They are trying to find some financial irregularities, I guess. No secret that we are grant receivers, so they are trying to find something. They are checking us completely,” Sataev said.
He also said that TV channel journalists try to work via social media.
“We are trying to gain support from other media outlets. We have obligations before broadcasters. We broadcast newscasts of “Nastoyashcheye vremya”, “Govori TV”. I think it is one of the important reasons of close scrutiny to us,” Sataev said.
According to the producer, the channel team together with lawyers are going to seek change of measure of restraint to director Taalai Duishembiev to “recognisance not to leave” or “home arrest”.
The timeline of events
On March 3, about 19:30 officers of the State Committee for National Security arrived at the Bishkek-based office of NEXT TV channel. They produced documents, which allowed them to search and seal the premises, broadcasting room and equipment room and all equipment. The officers also detained director Taalai Duishembiev and broadcasting engineer Taalai Beishenbaev.
Producer of the TV channel, Omurbek Sataev, said to CABAR.asia that they stopped the broadcasting of NEXT TV immediately.
“We have learned about it from our office neighbours. Our colleagues who were detained could not make a call. Their phones were taken away. Our team came to the GKNB building. The committee’s officers confirmed that our director Taalai Duishembiev was detained, but they didn’t confirm information about the detention of our broadcasting engineer Taalai Beishenbaev. We started to look for him anxiously and called the Ministry of Interior Affairs, GUOBDD. Later on, GKNB officers finally confessed that they had Beishenbaev at their place. He was released in the morning,” Sataev said.
According to him, everyone was perplexed with detention of the broadcasting engineer since he did not have anything to do with content development of the TV channel.
“He just presses the buttons,” Sataev emphasised.
Meanwhile, NEXT TV was accused of “inciting interethnic hatred and invoking interethnic hate”. The reason was the Facebook publication by Yuri Poita reprinted in the Telegram channel of NEXT media.
Being the Ukraine-based journalist, Poita referring to the ex-chief of KNB of Kazakhstan Alnur Musaev wrote that “Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan receded from their positions under Russia’s pressure and expressed their readiness to provide military assistance to it in private.”
Later on, the Ministry of Defence of Kyrgyzstan made an official statement, where it said “all military units of the republic stay within the country and there are no plans to deploy them beyond the state border.”
It should be noted that journalists of NEXT TV made a reference to the source of information – account of journalist Poita – in their material.
There’s always a reason behind everything
Upon detention of Taalai Duishembiev and suspension of NEXT TV broadcasting, the Facebook account of politician Ravshan Dzheenbekov, owner of the TV channel, became the messenger of further events.
Ex-deputy said that GKNB had been putting pressure on the TV channel for several months.
“Kamchy, what has the director of NEXT to do with it? I am the owner, you’d better arrest me,” Ravshan Dzheenbekov wrote addressing the head of GKNB, Kamchibek Tashiev (author’s spelling and punctuation).
According to Omurbek Sataev, producer of the TV channel, they knew that the editorial policy of NEXT TV was unacceptable by some people.
“As you know, whenever any opinion different from the official one is expressed on air, any person would think about the consequences,” he said.
Reaction of the public and legal institutions
‘Adilet’ Legal Clinic as well as the ombudsman of Kyrgyzstan Atyr Abdrakhmatova reacted to the detention of director Taalai Duishembiev and suspension of broadcasting of NEXT TV.
Human rights defenders urged the judicial authorities to give legal evaluation to the legitimacy, adequacy and need for measures taken against the TV channel.
Taalai Duishembiev’s lawyer, Akmat Alagushev, told his opinion to journalists. He emphasised that the closure and sealing of the TV channel office were illegal.
“In our opinion, NEXT TV channel has nothing to do with it because there was a different source. The information was provided by another resource, which has no legal links with the TV channel, so there were no legal grounds for sealing the office and suspending the broadcasting,” Alagushev said.
The fund for investigative journalism also reacted to the detention. In their official accounts on the media, they published the call to “stop the practice of opening criminal cases against the media and journalists who perform their professional duties on raising awareness of the society and the state.”
According to experts, there is an increasing pressure on the media in Kyrgyzstan. On January 22, law enforcement bodies came to search the office of the author of investigative shows, Temirov.Live, and found, according to law enforcement officers, narcotic drugs in the pocket of journalist Bolot Temirov. On the same day, another member of the team, akyn Bolot Nazarov, was detained out of office for possessing a parcel of hashish.
On January 1, it became known that the prosecutor’s office of Pervomaisky district initiated a criminal case under article 407 “Propaganda of war, namely dissemination in any form of opinions, ideas or calls to cause aggression of one country against another country or to initiate military actions” of the Criminal Code of the Kyrgyz Republic. According to the General Prosecutor’s Office, the article about the armed conflict in the border area published on the website of Kaktus.media contained misleading information that the soldiers of Kyrgyzstan were the first to start fire, and thus provoked Tajikistan.
Later, on March 5, the protest was held in front of the building of the Pervomaisky district court in support of TV channel director Taalai Duishembiev. Nearly 50 people gathered there. Many of them held posters in their hands “Freedom of speech is endangered”, “Hands off the media”.
Currently, the court changed the measure of restraint for Taalai Duishembiev from “detention for 48 hours” to “detention for two months.”