Kyrgyz Activist Gets 2 Years For Criticizing Growing Chinese Presence

The Lenin District Court in Bishkek found activist and politician Mavlyan Askarbekov guilty and sentenced him to two years in prison on offenses related to a law on incitement of racial, ethnic, national, religious, or interregional hatred, a verdict he called "absurd."

Askarbekov was detained in June after criticizing the growing presence of Chinese citizens in Kyrgyzstan, including their involvement in small and midsize businesses.

Prosecutors said Askarbekov's Facebook posts contained explicit calls to incite interethnic discord.

"When does incitement to hatred occur? When someone writes something against a particular ethnic group and calls for some kind of action against them. Expressing criticism alone does not constitute incitement to hatred," lawyer and human rights defender Klara Sooronkulova told RFE/RL.

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"No one in those posts called for action against the Chinese. People everywhere are saying, ‘'There are too many Chinese.' Are they going to imprison everyone for that?" she added.

China's expanding role in Kyrgyzstan has become increasingly hard to ignore.

During the first half of 2026, Kyrgyzstan issued some 61,000 work visas, according to the Foreign Ministry's Consular Department, with about 60 percent going to Chinese citizens.

That influx of Chinese workers is part of a wider economic expansion and also hard to miss on city streets.

In a country of just more than 7 million people -- where hundreds of thousands leave to work abroad, mainly in Russia, and remittances sustain many households -- the arrival of so many Chinese workers has been difficult to accept for many Kyrgyz.

Kyrgyz officials have defended Chinese involvement as necessary for development and have tried to keep a lid on the government for failing to provide clear information about Chinese migration and employment.

In battling online criticism, the state has turned to what it calls "forensic linguistic examination" to determine whether social media posts break the law.

Joomart Karabaev, a former researcher at the Kyrgyz National Academy of Sciences, said the practice has been entirely weaponized. He knows that firsthand.

Karabaev was arrested and given a three-year probationary sentence after publicly exposing how state security forces dictate expert findings.

"They have started playing the role of a court, effectively becoming an institution that rubber-stamps the guilt established by the investigation and prosecution," he said.

"It has become common to dig up someone's old and new opinions when their political position is disliked, find an article under which they can be charged, and then imprison them based on the conclusions of a linguistic examination," Karabaev added.

In Askarbekov's case, he criticized the growing number of Chinese citizens involved in Kyrgyzstan's small and medium-sized businesses, arguing they were displacing local entrepreneurs.

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He publicly called on the prime minister to discuss the issue in a live debate. Instead of public dialogue, the initiative ended in Askarbekov's prosecution and imprisonment.

The case comes as China's economic clout in Central Asia continues to grow.

As of June, Kyrgyzstan owed about $1.4 billion to China, according to the Kyrgyz Finance Ministry. China remained the country's largest external creditor, accounting for 28.1 percent of total external debt at the end of 2025, according to the International Monetary Fund.

This deep economic reliance has made public criticism of Chinese influence a highly sensitive political issue across the region.

In 2019, Kyrgyz activist Guljamila Saparalieva was arrested and charged with inciting ethnic hatred after participating in a protest against Beijing's treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang and the influx of Chinese migrants.

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In neighboring Uzbekistan, farmers in several regions accused local authorities of pressuring them to surrender farmland that was subsequently leased or earmarked for Chinese investors between late 2024 and early 2026.

Beijing is reported to closely monitor such developments and has shown a willingness to deploy diplomatic pressure when public demonstrations affect its strategic interests.

In November 2025, members of the Nagyz Atajurt movement in Kazakhstan protested near the border with China, demonstrating against Beijing's treatment of ethnic Kazakhs in Xinjiang and demanding the release of a Kazakh citizen detained there.

The activists also raised broader alarms about China's growing leverage over Astana.

The demonstration prompted China's Consulate General in Almaty to issue a sharp diplomatic note to Kazakhstan's Foreign Ministry.

The note, obtained and reviewed by RFE/RL's Kazakh Service, called the protest "an open provocation against the dignity of the People's Republic of China" and an insult to the Chinese Communist Party and its leadership, urging Kazakh authorities to "seriously investigate" the incident.

Kazakh court documents reveal that investigators placed the diplomatic note directly into the case file. The prosecution cited China's formal objections as evidence that the protest damaged bilateral relations. The activists were subsequently convicted of inciting ethnic discord and each received a five-year prison sentence.