Things have got worse since the election. On December 30th Mr Jeyenbekov\u2019s main rival for the presidency, Omurbek Babanov, announced that he was quitting politics and resigning his parliamentary seat. That came as no surprise. Mr Babanov\u2014whom Mr Jeyenbekov had personally threatened to lock up\u2014had already fled the country after the election to escape spurious charges of inciting ethnic unrest that could have led to a long spell in prison. Kanatbek Isayev, an MP who endorsed Mr Babanov, did not escape so lightly. On January 4th he was jailed for nine years for corruption, in a case that had been dormant since 2011 but which the authorities suddenly decided to press ahead with last year. He faces a separate, implausible charge of plotting a coup that could see another sentence slapped on top.<\/p>\n
Jailing obstreperous politicians is becoming a habit. Last year the authorities abruptly accused Omurbek Tekebayev, another opposition leader, of taking a bribe in 2010. He was subsequently imprisoned for eight years, preventing him from mounting an electoral challenge to Mr Jeyenbekov.<\/p>\n
Kyrgyz journalists who fail to toe the government line are also under pressure. After the election a plucky website named Kloop published allegations that Mr Jeyenbekov\u2019s campaign team had got hold, and made unfair use, of government data on voters to swing the closely fought election. It was rewarded with threats of libel action. Mr Jeyenbekov has form when it comes to suing journalists. In October he won a fierce libel suit against another media outlet. Police have also impounded the property of a television station belonging to Mr Babanov, ostensibly over a disputed payment to another business.<\/p>\n
Foreign journalists and watchdogs have not fared well under Mr Jeyenbekov either. In December one of the few Western reporters based in Kyrgyzstan, Chris Rickleton, a correspondent for AFP, a news agency, was summarily deported on claims that he had violated immigration law, which he denies. The authorities have prevented Mihra Rittmann, a researcher for Human Rights Watch, a pressure group, from visiting the country for two years on similar grounds. Last year the government also barred a campaigner from a respected Russian rights group, Memorial. Azimjon Askarov, one of Kyrgyzstan\u2019s most prominent human-rights advocates, is serving a life sentence, also on flimsy charges of fomenting ethnic unrest.<\/p>\n
As Mr Jeyenbekov recently noted, Kyrgyzstan remains the first and only Central Asian country with a functioning, if flawed, parliamentary democracy. Protesters have toppled wayward governments twice in recent years. Democracy, Mr Jeyenbekov said poetically in his inauguration speech, \u201chas two friends: first freedom, second responsibility\u201d. Alas, he does not seem to be taking his responsibility to protect the country\u2019s democratic freedoms at all seriously.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Economist Life is getting harder for opposition politicians and journalists TINY and turbulent, Kyrgyzstan likes to tout itself as a trailblazer for democracy in Central Asia, a region otherwise presided over by autocrats. The former Soviet republic of 6m has \u201cproven to the world that it is a democratic country\u201d, its new president, Sooronbay Jeyenbekov (pictured), trumpeted triumphantly as… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":71,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[28,29],"class_list":["post-1364","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-article-post","tag-democracy","tag-kyrgyzstan"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/southandcentralasiablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1364","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/southandcentralasiablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/southandcentralasiablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/southandcentralasiablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/71"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/southandcentralasiablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1364"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/southandcentralasiablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1364\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1365,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/southandcentralasiablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1364\/revisions\/1365"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/southandcentralasiablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1364"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/southandcentralasiablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1364"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/southandcentralasiablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1364"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}