Kyrgyzstan's catch-and-release model to keep grumblers in line
The current leadership came to power through rowdy street politics. So they know it is dangerous to let dissenters off the leash. This has made them overly eager to arrest activists.
Kyrgyzstan has fashioned a novel and intriguing authoritarian tactic.
First, arrest government opponents on dubious charges. Later, have the courts release them.
The effect is to neutralize the political threat, while maintaining the façade of a just and benevolent system.
This approach was given a test run last week, when 22 activists, politicians and journalists on trial on charges of plotting mass unrest were acquitted by Bishkek’s Pervomaisky district court, much to the surprise of rights advocates.
Prosecutors had sought 20-year prison sentences for all the accused, but the judge ruled that there was insufficient evidence to convict. All defendants were released and emerged from the court to the cheers of joyous supporters. The state may yet appeal the ruling.
The group in the dock were swept up in a wave of arrests in October 2022 in response to their vocal opposition to a landmark border demarcation deal with Uzbekistan. Their stated opposition to the agreement was that it was being ratified without proper consideration for parliamentary procedure or transparent consultation with the public.
Communities in some border areas complained that precious real estate was being given away to Uzbekistan. The provision to give Tashkent control over an important cross-border reservoir gave this legal saga its name: the Kempir-Abad case.
But the authorities argued from the outset that this was a smokescreen. Their position was and remains that troublemaking gadflies were hoping to exploit grassroots anger to topple the government.
Deputy Prime Minister Edil Baisalov restated this thesis after the June 14 acquittal.
“If we had followed the lead of these politicians, the country would have been mired in rallies and protests. There would have been no stability, and we would not have managed to achieve what we did,” he said on a political talk show produced by RFE/RL’s Kyrgyz service.
Officials are hopeful that completion of the border delimitation process in early 2023 will lay the ground for a blistering new phase of trade and economic relations. Sure enough, initiatives like the jointly operated Kyrgyz-Uzbek automobile assembly plant that has been built in Kyrgyzstan’s northern Chui district would have been inconceivable until a few years ago.
Baisalov brushed aside claims that the public was not adequately consulted over the government’s border deal plans.
“[President Sadyr Japarov] on several occasions gathered top leaders of political parties, civil society activists and, above all, those who most actively criticized plans for the state border,” he said. “Despite all his efforts … some people, despite being well-briefed, tried to use the issue of Kempir-Abad to organize mass unrest.”
This is a fanciful reinvention of the facts. When parliamentary subcommittees convened to study the matter in October 2022, their deliberations were kept secret. When the catspaw parliament gathered to vote on the agreement, many lawmakers were not even granted the privilege of viewing the text that they were endorsing.
The Japarov regime considered that rush a case of breaking constitutional shells to make omelettes.
As for resorting to arresting so many government critics in one fell swoop, Japarov and his enforcer, an old ally and now-head of the security services, Kamchybek Tashiyev, acted as they did because they know better than most how things can go in Kyrgyz street politics.
Aggressive supporters of the pair skillfully exploited the turmoil that ensued in the protests against rigged parliamentary elections in October 2020 to unseat President Sooronbai Jeenbekov. Days after Jeenbekov was shunted out of office, Japarov was installed as president.
Readiness to detect a similar scheme behind every manifestation of robustly anti-government political activism has made the Japarov administration overly willing to use the jail cell as a form of political inoculation.
For the record, Japarov said after the Kempir-Abad verdict that the presidential administration has no say in court rulings.
“The justice system is a separate branch of government. I have said from the very beginning that no one has the right to interfere with the work of the courts,” he told Kabar news agency.
Nobody can take such remarks seriously.
The Kempir-Abad acquittals are one in the eye for the likes of Amnesty International, which complained ahead of the ruling that the trial was “a travesty of justice.”
Within a day of putting out that statement, Amnesty was compelled to change tack and gratefully “applaud this just verdict and hope it will set a precedent for the release of all individuals currently facing politically motivated prosecution in Kyrgyzstan.”
But the beneficiaries of the Pervomaisky court ruling are clear-eyed about how much promise this unexpected turn of events represents.
One of the acquitted defendants, former Constitutional Court judge Klara Sooronkulova, said outside the courtroom that it was too early to be jubilant.
“The office of the prosecutor, which requested we be sentenced to 20 years, can appeal,” she was quoted as saying by Current Time.
This is a sword of Damocles model for keeping the potentially unruly in line.
Adakhan Madumarov, the leader of a prominent opposition party, was arrested in September on treason charges, which were also suspiciously filed in response to his insistent grumbling over the border demarcation agreement. He was released in April, but a pretext may well be found to lock him up again if he reverts to his fractious ways.
Recently adopted legislation regulating the activities of nongovernmental organizations will likewise be used selectively when the need arises if any of them should prove a nuisance.
Media outlets probing too deeply into the business dealings of relatives of the ruling elite are liable to have their licenses pulled, websites blocked, or journalists arrested.
There is a more purely monetary angle to the catch-and-release format too.
Early into Japarov’s time in charge, the authorities implemented an arrangement known as “kusturizatsiya,” whereby businessmen and former officials suspected of corrupt dealings were kept in jail until they made a generous donation to the state. Tashiyev, the head of the State Committee for National Security, says this has accrued a stunning $1 billion or so – some of it in the form of livestock – to the state.
Champions of the Kempir-Abad acquittals are right to call them historic. This is not ordinarily how such cases unfold in Central Asia.
But this development does not signify that Kyrgyzstan is spurning the cudgel. It is just using it more cunningly.
I was trying to forward the article to my x and threads followers but it's not letting me I was able to do this before has something changed so I can't send your articles to my social media followers?
very reminiscent of the idea of the "RepressIntern" of Mark Galeotti, how these methods spread.