A leading journalism watchdog has urged the Kyrgyz parliament not to pass a controversial bill modeled on Russia’s repressive “foreign agent” laws.
The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) on October 25 argued that the legislation could “force many nonprofits to close” in the Central Asian country, as it has in Russia.
Earlier in the day, Kyrgyzstan’s legislature adopted the bill, which would require nonprofts receiving foreign funding to register with the government as "foreign representatives," in its first of three readings.
“Amid Kyrgyz authorities’ ongoing campaign to silence leading independent media, plans to copy Russia’s foreign agent legislation threaten to seriously hamper the work of press freedom groups and further restrict the country’s beleaguered free press,” Gulnoza Said, CPJ’s Europe and Central Asia program coordinator, was quoted as saying.
The statement cited Semetey Amanbekov, an activist with the Kyrgyzstan Media Platform, as saying the authorities could use the legislation to target media, media rights organizations, and other civil society groups. Amanbekov noted that several prominent independent news websites in Kyrgyzstan are run by nonprofits.
In April, a Kyrgyz court approved a request by the Culture Ministry to shut down the operations of RFE/RL’s Kyrgyz Service, known locally as Radio Azattyk, because the broadcaster refused to remove a video about clashes along a disputed segment of the Kyrgyz-Tajik border. At the time, then- RFE/RL President Jamie Fly called the decision “outrageous.”
In September, some 120 nongovernmental groups urged parliament and Kyrgyzstan’s Supreme Council to reject the proposed legislation. In an open letter, the groups said the bill could have a chilling effect on civil society and could harm the country’s economy.
Since 2012, Russia has used its “foreign agents” laws to label and punish critics of government policies, including the February 2022 massive invasion of neighboring Ukraine. The vague laws have been used to persecute organizations working in diverse fields such as education, culture, health care, environmental protection, and human rights defense.
