Entry Bans Suggest Kyrgyzstan Closing Itself Off

A recent trend towards preventing leading human rights activists from entering Kyrgyzstan is a worrying sign in a country once dubbed Central Asia’s “island of democracy”. 

Over the last year and a half, the Kyrgyz authorities have denied entry to four prominent human rights activists, most recently Nigina Bahrieva from Tajikistan, who was stopped at the border at the beginning of December.

Bahrieva was coming to Kyrgyzstan to conduct training for official institutions – the office of the human rights ombudsman and the national parliament. But on arriving at Bishkek airport, she was told she would not be allowed in, and moreover that she was banned from visiting the country for ten years.

In a statement issued on December 10, the presidency of the European Union voiced “great concern” about the case, which it said might have been connected with an earlier visit during which Bahrieva told local human rights activists how they could approach the United Nations Human Rights Committee with complaints relating to protests that took place in the southern town of Nookat in October 2008.

Violent disturbances sparked by the town council’s refusal to hold a celebration of the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Fitr were followed by a wave of detentions of alleged supporters of the banned group Hizb ut-Tahrir, which the authorities accused of provoking the trouble. Human rights activists recorded numerous allegations of police brutality and other illegal actions in a case which saw 32 people sentenced to long terms of imprisonment. (See Kyrgyzstan: Islamic Protest Sparked by Official Insensitivity, RCA No. 551, 14-Oct-08; and Kyrgyzstan: Does Tough Policing Spell End of Islamic Radicalism?, RCA No. 572, 03-Apr-09.)

As well as foreign rights organisations, the Kyrgyz ombudsman’s office conducted its own investigation and issued a damning report about police treatment of detained suspects.

Two other rights activists from abroad who were barred from Kyrgyzstan were also working on the Nookat case.

Vitaly Ponomarev, a Central Asia specialist with the Moscow-based human rights centre Memorial was deported from Bishkek airport in February 2009. No explanation was given, and when he later tried to enter the country by train he was again stopped, and this time told he was persona non grata.

Memorial had earlier published a detailed report on Nookat, accusing the authorities of torturing detainees and manufacturing evidence for their trials.

Bahrom Hamroev, who heads the Association of Political Emigres From Central Asia and also works with Memorial, was deported from Kyrgyzstan in November, after meeting relatives of people detained by the authorities in southern Kyrgyzstan.

The fifth case is that of Ivar Dale of the Norwegian Helsinki Committee, barred from entering Kyrgyzstan in October 2008. Despite enquiries from the EU, OSCE and UN, the Kyrgyz authorities have yet to explain why Dale is unwelcome.

The Helsinki Committee in Norway issued a statement suggesting the Kyrgyz government might have grown nervous about a grants programme intended for human rights organisations in neighbouring Uzbekistan. Kyrgyz leaders are wary of upsetting their authoritarian and much more powerful neighbour.

Aziza Abdirasulova, head of the Kylym Shamy human rights group and a member of the commission the ombudsman tasked with the Nookat investigation, believes the deportations of Ponomarev and Hamroev were part of an attempted cover-up by the security services.

“These actions are a measure of how closed our state is,” said Abdirasulova. “The security services sense that their fabrication of investigations, including those relating to Nookat, risk being exposed.”

Dinara Oshurakhunova, who heads the Coalition for Democracy and Civil Society, agrees that the authorities are trying to shield the country from external scrutiny.

“It’s an attempt to create a Soviet-style Iron Curtain,” she said. “After all, it’s impossible to conceal one’s distasteful actions if there’s always someone coming in and checking out the facts provided by the official agencies.”

Ilya Lukashov is an IWPR-trained journalist in Jalalabad.

This article was produced under IWPR’s Building Central Asian Human Rights Protection & Education Through the Media programme, funded by the European Commission. The contents of this article are the sole responsibility of IWPR and can in no way be taken to reflect the views of the European Union.