Amnesty International Report 2004 - Kyrgystan

Covering events from January - December 2003

Police detained and reportedly ill-treated women demonstrating for justice for their relatives who had been victims of excessive use of force by law enforcement officials in 2002. Courts continued to award punitive criminal libel damages against independent newspapers critical of the government. A journalist investigating corruption allegations died in suspicious circumstances.

Background

In January the President replaced the Council for Constitutional Reforms with a group of experts to expedite the drafting of amendments to the Constitution. A national referendum on these amendments took place just two weeks later in early February amid claims of serious voting irregularities, including intimidation of election observers.

In November the President signed into law amendments to the criminal code criminalizing torture. A moratorium on the death penalty, which had been in place since 1998, was extended until the end of 2003.

In November the Supreme Court formally banned the Islamist Hizb-ut-Tahrir political party, which it designated as "extremist".

Excessive use of force by police

In May police in Bishkek broke up a peaceful demonstration by members of the recently formed Committee of Mothers and Wives of the Aksy Victims. The women were protesting against the acquittal on appeal of three law enforcement officials sentenced in December 2002 to prison terms for their part in the fatal shooting of protesters in Aksy in March that year; a State Commission had found that the use of force by law enforcement agencies was "erroneous". The women, most of whom were elderly, were detained for 10 hours and reportedly threatened and humiliated by police officers. At least one woman was reportedly beaten. Following their release 18 of the women began a hunger strike, demanding to see President Akayev to appeal directly to him for justice. They ended the hunger strike after they received assurances by the presidential chief of staff that he would submit their appeal to the President.

Attacks on the press

Courts continued to award punitive criminal libel damages against independent newspapers publishing articles critical of the government or disclosing allegations of corruption and abuse of office. The state-run printing press reportedly refused to print several independent newspapers because of their perceived opposition to the government. A journalist investigating allegations of corruption died in mysterious circumstances.

• In June the independent newspaper Moya Stolitsa Novosti was forced to close down after criminal libel damages awarded against the newspaper pushed it into bankruptcy. Over 30 libel lawsuits were filed against Moya Stolitsa Novosti as a result of articles critical of senior government officials or alleging corruption and fraud by state officials and in the private sector. In January Aleksandra Chernykh, the daughter of the political editor Rina Prizhivoit and a journalist herself, was assaulted and badly beaten. In June the car of Aleksandr Kim, the paper's publisher and editor-in-chief, was set on fire.

• On 15 September the body of 27-year-old Ernis Nazalov, a correspondent for the Kyrgyz Rukhu newspaper, was reportedly found in a canal in the Karasuu region. According to the Ministry of Internal Affairs (MVD) the original autopsy revealed no sign of a violent death and a verdict of accidental death by drowning was recorded. Ernis Nazalov's father, however, alleged that one of his son's hands was broken and bore knife wounds. According to colleagues, Ernis Nazalov had been investigating allegations of high-level corruption and was about to publish his findings. There was concern that his death could have been linked to his investigative work. The MVD confirmed that he had been attacked two weeks prior to his death by unknown assailants who had stolen some of his research materials.