The hearing date was confirmed by Ulan Seyitbekov, a lawyer for Mahabat Tazhibek kyzy, the director of Temirov Live, an investigative media outlet and OCCRP partner. Seyitbekov said the hearings will be closed to the public, and media.
The journalists are all current or former employees of Temirov Live, which has repeatedly exposed corruption amongst government officials. The journalists have rejected the government’s accusations against them.
“As everyone knows, the arrest of 11 journalists and the criminal case against them has a political overtone. That is, law enforcement agencies carry out the order, but everything will depend on the decision from above,” Seyitbekov told OCCRP.
Kyrgyzstan’s Ministry of Internal Affairs announced the charges in January after police said they conducted a “forensic linguistic examination” on social media posts from the reporters, and found “calls for protests and riots.”
Seyitbekov said he believes powerful officials directed police to use the so-called forensic linguistic examination to manufacture evidence against the journalists. Seyitbekov said he was unable to obtain the report during pre-trial proceedings, but he now has a copy.
“The results in it are completely untrue,” he said.
International advocacy groups and politicians have condemned the case against Temirov Live journalists, noting a recent pattern of attacks on media and civil society.
Kyrgyzstan had been seen as democratic leader in a region characterized by autocracy and corruption, but the Central Asian country has been backsliding over the past few years under President Sadyr Japarov, critics say.
In the worldwide press freedom index compiled by Reporters Without Borders, Kyrgyzstan last year fell 50 spots to 122 out of 180 countries.
The Committee to Protect Journalists called the arrests of the Temirov Live journalists “an unprecedented assault on press freedom in modern Kyrgyz history.”
The assaults have been physical in at least one case, according to the media outlet’s founder, Bolot Temirov, who fled Kyrgyzstan in 2022.
He posted photos on Facebook on May 12 of a badly bruised Tazhibek kyzy, who is his former wife and the director of Temirov Live. In his Facebook post, Temirov accused a guard of beating her while she was in pre-trial detention.
The Penitentiary Service denied the accusation, according to a report by Radio Azattyk, the Kyrgyz service of the U.S.-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.
A spokesperson told Azattyk that Tazhibek kyzy had resisted guards who were moving her to a different cell and that, in the ensuing tussle, she “could have hit the beds and walls, which is why marks were left on the body.”
Another Kyrgyz media under attack is Kloop, OCCRP’s member center in the country. Kloop is fighting a legal battle to stay open after a court ordered its closure in February, ruling that it did not have a proper license to practice journalism.
On May 21, Kloop won the Free Media Pioneer award from the International Press Institute (IPI). In its announcement, IPI condemned Kyrgyzstan’s “crackdown on independent media,” including the arrests of Temirov Live journalists.
The press freedom group also noted that President Japarov recently signed a law requiring non-profit media such as Kloop and Temirov Live to register as “foreign representatives.” Similar legislation has been used to target free media in Russia, and sparked mass protests in Georgia.
