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“We’ll Penalise GKNB Officers and the Judge.” Human Rights Activists Seek Removal of their Reports from a List of Extremist Materials

Reviewing the list of extremist materials in Kyrgyzstan, human rights activists have come to find their reports on the list. Now they are in litigation with the general prosecutor office seeking the reversal of the judgment.


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The human rights organisation Bir Duino Kyrgyzstan has been seeking to appeal the judgment of Oktyabrsky district court of Bishkek in courts of various jurisdictions for nearly six months. In January 2017, the judges found the report on human rights of migrants submitted to the UN Committee and the report “A chronicle of violence: the events in the south of Kyrgyzstan in June 2010 (Osh region)” extremist ones. However, the authors of these reports came to know about this judgement one year later.

Only in late October this year, the Supreme Court again remanded the case to the trial court.

The alternative report on the situation of Kyrgyz migrant workers in Russia and Kazakstan was issued in 2015. Its authors were public association “Human Rights Movement Bir Duino Kyrgyzstan” and anti-discrimination centre (ADC) “Memorial”. The document stated that Uzbeks, nationals of Kyrgyzstan, who fled from the country during the 2010 events, were double victims. They fled without passports and while staying in Russia and Kazakstan they could become victims of human trafficking. Also human rights activists criticised the decision of the Russian authorities to deport and extradite them as it would mean to expose them to a risk of torture and unfair justice.

The report “A chronicle of violence: the events in the south of Kyrgyzstan in June 2010 (Osh region)” has been prepared by the human rights centre “Memorial” (has nothing to do with the above-mentioned ADC “Memorial” – editor’s note) jointly with the Norwegian Helsinki Committee and Freedom House human rights organisation. The document is a detailed chronology of events in the south of the country from April 29 to June 15, 2010.

Human rights defenders submitted a preliminary version of the report to the authorities of Kyrgyzstan back in February 2012. Afterwards, they brought it up for discussion among civic activists, lawyers and experts.  A copy of “A chronicle of violence” has been handed over to ex-president of Kyrgyzstan Roza Otunbaeva by the head of Central Asian Programmes of the human rights centre “Memorial”.

Why did they start to check them?

In March 2016, the State National Security Committee (GKNB) of Kyrgyzstan submitted both documents for expert evaluation. The reason is still unknown. The agency has declined to comment referring to the Supreme Court decision.

Artur Medetbekov. Photo: knews.kg

According to ex-deputy chairman of GKNB, Artur Medetbekov, intelligence agencies start checking if they have suspicions or any information about extremist materials. Further, they submit such materials to expert evaluation and if their suspicions are verified, these materials will be passed to investigative agencies.

“There can be alarming, operative materials and they [GKNB] don’t have to inform, say, extremist groups or their leaders or any other human rights organisations of their study or analysis of any organisation or a group suspected of extremism. There’s secrecy of operations,” Medetbekov said. “When it comes to investigation, it’s up to the investigation team whether to classify the case or not. If they don’t classify it, then they [the suspects] would be informed and notified during the interrogation, when they would retain a lawyer. But no organisation involved would be notified during the analysis or study.”

However, human rights activists have been notified neither during the investigation, nor during the trial. They think documents were a mere excuse.

Vitaly Ponomaryov. Photo: memohrc.org

“The real reason was our interest in their misapplication of anti-extremism law in Kyrgyzstan, which caused discontent of the then administration of GKNB. There might be other suggestions I won’t specify. We’ve received no reply still,” the director of Central Asian programmes of human rights centre “Memorial” Vitaly Ponomaryov said.

“This is a deal of the three power structures – GKNB, general prosecutor’s office and the court – against independent organisations. I don’t mean only us, but our partners. They have framed this case up to defame us anyhow. Donors stopped funding us last year and the year before last,” Tolekan Ismailova, head of human rights organisation “Bir Duino Kyrgyzstan”, said.

““Bir Duino Kyrgyzstan” and “Memorial” are not the first human rights organisations accused of extremism. In 2014, GKNB conducted investigation regarding “Advocacy Centre”, which provided legal assistance at Osh. Its employees took a poll in the south of Kyrgyzstan and the investigation team found some questions to incite interethnic hostility. Searches were made in the offices of the organisation, its property was seized, employees and consultants were interrogated. Later on, criminal charges were dropped.

GKNB KR. Photo: ru.sputnik.kg

Debatable opinion

Expert opinions regarding the alternative report on migrants stated that the document contained no direct calls for hatred or justification for terrorism, yet the document was found “subjective, prejudiced and nationalistically-oriented.”

“This call is covert and is based on the distorted perception of driving force of a conflict, which in turn can cause hostile relations between representatives of the Kyrgyz and Uzbek nations,” wrote Azizbek Dzhusupbekov, doctor of philology, in his expert opinion.

As to the report “A chronicle of violence”, it was found to incite interethnic hostility. According to experts, it contained “calls intended to incite national, racial, religious and inter-regional hostility.”

“It contains expressions meant to incite national hatred, which can cause hostility or hatred among representatives of a certain ethnic group against another group, cause distrust, sense of alienation, suspicion changing to sustainable hostility, incite limitation of rights of another ethnic groups or violence against them,” expert opinion of the National Academy of Sciences (NAN) of the Kyrgyz Republic stated.

Vitaly Ponomaryov believes that these expert opinions are quite doubtful and do not meet the requirements to scientific investigation. According to him, one of the specialists has not even read the full report, but analysed only some excerpts.

“Narynbaeva (author of linguistic analysis), by order of former administration of GKNB, has made no scruples to impute “statements about natural superiority of one nation and inferiority and moral turpitude of another nation”, “calls meant to incite racial, religious and interreligious hatred” etc. to us, although the issues of religion, race or interregional problems have not been addressed in the report,” the human rights activist said.

Nevertheless, as a result of findings, GKNB has submitted the documents to the general prosecutor’s office, which, in turn, submitted them to court. As a result, the court recognised these reports extremist in January 2017.

The authors of these reports learned about the court decision only in March 2018, when they monitored the list of extremist materials on the website of the ministry of justice of Kyrgyzstan and found their organisations, “Human Rights Movement Bir Duino Kyrgyzstan” and HRC “Memorial”, on this list.

List of extremist materials. Screenshot of the website of Ministry of Justice of the Kyrgyz Republic

In late May, human rights activists appealed against the judgement of the Oktyabrsky district court; however, the judicial board found their failure to meet deadlines for filing an appeal to be unreasonable. And on October 22, the Supreme Court delivered a judgment in their favour and remanded the case for a retrial.

“You are prohibited to enter the republic”

In July 2016, at the same time when reports were examined, human rights activist Vitaly Ponomaryov was prohibited to enter Kyrgyzstan. When he made an inquiry about the reason for this prohibition, he received an official reply, which failed to clear up the situation, “According to article 7 of the law on external migration, the entry of a foreign national or a stateless person into the Kyrgyz Republic shall be refused in order to ensure the state security or maintain public order.”

“Repeated cases of prohibited entries for human rights activists are the element of general policy meant to weaken dissent.” Vitaly Ponomaryov
He was not the first one who was prohibited to enter the country. In the last 5 years, the authorities have prohibited human rights activists Vasilya Inoyatova and Mira Ritman, journalists Grigory Mikhailov and Chris Rickleton to enter Kyrgyzstan.

“Prohibitions to enter the country for foreign citizens may be due to various reasons. But repeated cases of prohibited entries for human rights activists are the element of general policy meant to weaken dissent,” Ponomaryov said.

The same is true, in his opinion, about the prohibition of the two reports and listing them as extremist materials. However, he thinks that misapplication of anti-extremism law of Kyrgyzstan is a more widespread problem.

“The applicable criminal liability for possession of the so-called “extremist materials” really discredits Kyrgyzstan. How many people are serving time in prison for the possession of a book or a text note? Many lawyers abroad refuse to believe this situation is possible in a country that is recognised as an “oasis of democracy” in the region. No post-Soviet country but Kyrgyzstan has such legal provision, and it gives way to misapplications and corruption,” Ponomaryov said.

In their report, Human Rights Watch has criticised broad definition of extremism in the laws of Kyrgyzstan. Besides, it has emphasised that the law on countering extremist activity does not require that the list of prohibited materials be exhaustive, it should only be published regularly. This situation is dangerous because a defendant may not know that materials in his/her possession are prohibited.

In 2015, the British international non-governmental organisation Article 19, which focuses on the promotion of freedom of expression, noted: that 

broad definition of extremist materials in the Kyrgyz law gives grounds to assume that the government gives itself a right to block access to any materials it disapproves.
According to the UN Secretary-General’s report dated August 2018, Kyrgyzstan was listed as a country where civil society “is exposed to purges, intimidation and attacks related to their activities, even when they interact with the UN system.”

A chance to win

“We are confident that we’ll penalise these GKNB officers and the judge.” Tolekan Ismailova
The decision adopted by the Supreme Court gives a chance to human rights defenders to have their reports eliminated from the list of extremist materials.

“It all depends on the human factor here. If the documents concern migrants and the 2010 events, they have many nuances, and many unclear things, which can be rethought today. I think there’s no extremism here; certain people just wanted to make it look like that,” Artur Medetbekov said.

Tolekan Ismailova. Photo: CABAR.asia

Meanwhile, human rights defenders of Bir Duino Kyrgyzstan make thorough preparations for the retrial. Their lawyer prepares an appeal to the General Prosecutor’s Office that the new general prosecutor should make the agency carry out their mission, i.e. to ensure compliance with the laws of the republic.

“We’ve elaborated our strategy very well. Our expert opinions are available to all tiers of authority. We have talked to our partners, held negotiation with the authority.  We are confident that our lawyers and the new authority would not repeat past actions. We are confident that we’ll penalise these GKNB officers and the judge. We’ve applied to the disciplinary committee of the judicial council to have this case investigated,” Tolekan Ismailova said.


This publication was produced under IWPR project «Forging links and raising voices to combat radicalization in Central Asia»

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