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Kyrgyz media outlet Kloop defies threats of closure [1]
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Date: 2023-09
When FC Barcelona opened a new football academy in Kyrgyzstan in late August, the public reaction in the Central Asian state was warm and welcoming.
An exhibition match was held to promote the opening of the academy – the first of its kind in Central Asia – in which Barcelona ‘legends’ played against a team of Asian ‘legends’, including Kyrgyzstan’s president Sadyr Japarov, a former member of the national football team.
Barely a fortnight on from the sold-out game, a simple good news story had become darker – and the fate of Kyrgyzstan’s leading independent media outlet was hanging by a thread.
On 22 August, Kloop published an investigation that revealed that the main investors in the Barcelona academy were relatives of President Japarov and his head of national security, Kamchybek Tashiyev. Four days later, Japarov confirmed this in an interview.
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On 28 August, Kyrgyz prosecutors filed a lawsuit demanding the liquidation of the Kloop Media Foundation, which runs the publication. The pretext was the fact that Kloop is registered as a non-profit rather than a media organisation, despite online outlets not needing a media licence under Kyrgyz law.
The lawsuit focuses mostly on accusations that Kloop is involved in “hidden manipulation of public opinion”, with prosecutors claiming that its articles cause “mental disorders”, “sexual anomalies” and “drug addiction” among readers.
Kyrgyzstan’s culture ministry has also ordered that Kloop’s website be blocked for publishing “fake news”, citing a news story, published on 1 September, that alleged an opposition politician had been tortured while in police custody.
The cascade of bad news came as a shock but not a surprise to Kloop, which has gone from a blog site for teenagers and students to a leading source of news, investigations and data journalism in the past 15 years. Kloop has broken vital stories about corruption, state policy and society in Kyrgyzstan.
openDemocracy spoke with Kloop editor Aidai Irgebaeva about why the independent press in Kyrgyzstan is under systemic attack.
openDemocracy: The news that Kloop is under threat of liquidation came immediately after your investigation into the financial backers of the Barcelona football academy. Is the lawsuit a form of retaliation for this publication?
Aidai Irgebaeva: Surprisingly, for some reason Barcelona has been associated with corruption before. So we have something of a shady story here.
After we published our investigation, Kyrgyzstan’s president gave an interview, criticising our media outlet. He said that publications such as Kloop were being paid by corrupt officials and politicians who had plundered the state and bought real estate abroad. Former presidents Kurmanbek Bakiyev and Askar Akaev fit this definition, as does former customs chief Raimbek Matraimov, and other corrupt officials who were the focus of our investigations.
If a corruption investigation can be considered PR [on behalf of a politician], then the president is right. But in reality, this is a typical manipulation of information.
Айдай Иргебаева | "ВКонтакте"
oD: Most of the arguments in the prosecutors’ lawsuit concern the “strongly negative nature” of your coverage. What claims does the prosecutor make?
AI: Edil Baisalov, the deputy chairman of the Kyrgyz government, said that the lawsuit against Kloop has nothing to do with our articles. [Baisalov claimed it related only to the lack of registration.] This man was once closely associated with the media and defended the idea of freedom of speech. He knows very well that, by law, newspapers, television and radio must register as media. This does not apply to online publications.
In general, the authorities are complaining because Kloop also hires election observers who record violations [at the ballot box during elections]. This can be seen from the prosecutor’s statement, which contains statements from our [election] observers.
But I also have the feeling that articles were selected at random [to suit the prosecutors’ purpose]. The prosecutor’s office indicated in the lawsuit a certain amount of Kloop articles about problems in Kyrgyzstan: inflation, its reliance on people leaving the country to work, elections themselves, corruption risks. They used the term “sharp criticism of power” to describe our coverage, that is, we see everything in a bad light, we criticise too much and are thus doing everything wrong. Sorry, but in Kyrgyzstan there is no law that states the authorities cannot be criticised.
oD: How did your editors react?
AI: This was quite expected. We just didn’t know it would be this bad. When the bank accounts of Radio Azattyk [the Kyrgyz service of US-funded RFE/RL] were blocked last year on money-laundering charges, an inside source informed us that the same was planned for Kloop.
But at that time we were unable to confirm this information. We only later learned that law enforcement agencies were really trying to collect something. From the lawsuit, we learned that back in 2021, a criminal investigation was opened against Kloop for “public calls to seize power”. How do they think a media outlet can seize power? It’s doubly funny to hear this from the authorities. In 2020, Japarov himself boasted to a Russian publication that he had seized power while in prison by sending messages through social networks [to bring people onto the streets].
There is a feeling that the prosecutor, who is asking for liquidation, added a criminal case [to justify the application]. It is unclear what stage this investigation is at. Is it still ongoing? Why can’t they find evidence of crimes?
[END]
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[1] Url:
https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/odr/kyrgyztan-media-investigation-kloop-barcelona-fc-interview-aidai-irgebaeva/
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