Kloop sees the move as part of the government’s effort to silence independent media.
The ministry received a complaint from the State Committee for National Security (GKNB), which claimed to have found false or unreliable information in a story about the possible torture of a jailed opposition politician by GKNB officials.
The story was based on a post on the official Facebook account of Ravshan Zheenbekov, who said he was tortured while in pre-trial detention.
Kloop has refused to delete the story and has already submitted an appeal to the Cabinet of Ministers and the Ministry of Culture.
The notice comes on the heels of a request made in August by the Bishkek Prosecutor's Office, asking a court to shut down Kloop, alleging that the news outlet lacks the proper license to operate as media and has upset the public with its critical reporting. A hearing is scheduled for September 26.
Kloop editor-in-chief Anna Kapushenko believes that the attempt to block their website is directly connected to the prosecutors' request.
"We think that the authorities will use all options to put pressure on Kloop and not only on us," she said. "The main goal is to drown out all outlets that provide an alternative to state propaganda and criticize the authorities."
It is not clear what specific information the GKNB considers unreliable or false. The Committee's press service refused to comment over the phone, asking journalists to submit a Freedom of Information request.
"The GKNB believes that this publication contradicts the law about false information, i.e. it discredits the professional reputation of that state body," explained Zarina Kalmaturova, a leading specialist at the Ministry of Culture's Information Policy Department.
According to Kalmuratova, the Ministry itself takes no responsibility for the veracity of the complaint or the GKNB's forensic analysis of the offending news item.
"The Ministry of Culture doesn't look at the content of the application; we do not consider whether it is false or not," said Kalmuratova. "All responsibility regarding [the evaluation of] the publication rests with the applicant."
Kalmuratova told OCCRP that in the same complaint, the GKNB also asked for a second article to be deleted, regarding Kyrgyzstan's support for Russia in its war in Ukraine, but the Ministry rejected that request as outside the scope of the law on false information since the item in question was published in the "Opinions" section.
In threatening to block Kloop's site, the Ministry is applying a controversial law on false information that was passed in August 2021. At the time, activists voiced concerns that it would be used to pressure independent media organizations. A key innovation of the law is that authorities no longer have to go through cumbersome court proceedings to block websites.
Over the past year, activists' concerns have come true. In October 2022, the law was used to block Azattyk, the Kyrgyz branch of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. Authorities cited a story about deadly military clashes on the Kyrgyz-Tajik border that was published not on Azattyk's site but on a social media account belonging to another branch of RFE/RL.
"I think this is an excuse to block [Kloop's] website," media lawyer Akmat Alagushev told OCCRP. "This definitely strikes at freedom of speech and the ability of people to access information."
Kloop editor-in-chief Anna Kapushenko agrees.
"I think that this law is used as pressure on the media, as a way to close everyone's mouths, as a way to generally narrow the space for freedom of speech," Kapushenko says. "We see that they want to force everyone to write only positive things and not to publish any critical stories."
