On July 16, Kyrgyzstan’s Supreme Court decided to leave unchanged a lower court’s ruling that the Kloop Media Foundation, the nonprofit behind investigative news website Kloop, be liquidated. According to Kloop, the foundation’s lawyers learned of the decision on August 22 and they have yet to receive a copy of the decision.
The Supreme Court’s decision in the Kloop case brings an end to its appeals efforts, but Kloop co-founder Rinat Tukhvatshin vowed to continue publishing.
“We basically didn’t expect anything else. Despite everything, Kloop will continue to operate,” he said. “During the liquidation trials, the number of users of our social networks has grown. And as long as at least one Kyrgyzstani reads us, we will continue to publish the most in-depth investigations, the most balanced news, and the most incisive columns.”
In August 2023, prosecutors in Bishkek applied to the court to close down the Kloop Media Foundation, alleging that it was “carrying out activities that go beyond the framework provided for by [its] charter.” The charter, prosecutors said in a statement, did not include “dissemination of information.” They also complained that Kloop was not listed in the state register of media outlets.
Kloop noted at the time that its charter did include “providing young people and other representatives of civil society with an information platform for freely expressing their opinions on socio-political and economic processes.” It also highlighted the fact that the bulk of the complaint focused on the tone of Kloop’s coverage.
In February 2024, the Oktyabrsky District Court in Bishkek sided with the government and ordered Kloop to close.
Metin Kazama, writing shortly after the decision for the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, with which Kloop has published several significant investigations, highlighted the “experts” called before the court to testify:
According to Jenishbek Aralbaev, a psychiatrist whom prosecutors invited to testify during a previous hearing on February 5, people with sleep disorders, irritability, and a short temper have been admitted to the hospital to be treated for neurosis – all because of Kloop.
Aralbaev explained to the court that Kloop had provided details in their stories that had upset his patients but that he himself would not know the specifics as he read the articles only superficially.
The psychiatrist was not able to answer the questions Kloop’s attorneys asked, such as to give concrete examples of whose mental breakdown the outlet had caused or perhaps show the court some medical records. In the end, the doctor agreed that his conclusion was unsubstantiated and did not meet the methodological requirements.
The lack of concrete details goes all the way to the top.
In an interview with state news agency Kabar, President Sadyr Japarov responded to a question about Kloop’s investigations by saying, “Haven’t you seen many times that one-sided slanderous and false materials were distributed.”
He denied that the closure of the media outlet would have a negative effect on the freedom of speech. “For 30 years, we have replaced anarchy with democracy and gossip with freedom of speech,” he said. “Now the community is recovering from those diseases.”
He went on to sat that “anarchy, spreading rumors, and false information is not freedom of speech.”
Japarov did not specify what “false information” Kloop had spread, but in September 2023 Kloop’s website was blocked in Kyrgyzstan following a complaint that had been filed under Kyrgyzstan’s regressive “false information” law. Kyrgyzstan’s Ministry of Culture, Information, Sport, and Youth Policy demanded that the outlet remove an article which cited then-jailed politician Ravshan Jeenbekov’s allegations (which he had posted on Facebook) that he had been tortured in pretrial detention. Kloop’s brief article cited his comments, provided the necessary context, and included a rebuttal from the penitentiary service. It was a basic news article.
Kloop did not (and has not) removed the article.
In an August 29 statement, Gulnoza Said, the Committee to Protect Journalists’ Europe and Central Asia program coordinator, said, “The forced shuttering of international award–winning investigative outlet Kloop is a shameful episode in the history of modern Kyrgyzstan – a country long viewed as a haven for press freedom in Central Asia – and is a clear indication that under President Japarov this reputation no longer holds.”
She urged Kyrgyz authorities to “immediately reverse their repressive course against the media and allow Kloop and all other independent outlets to work freely.”
In a February interview with The Diplomat, just ahead of the liquidation decision, Kloop’s Tuhvatshin explained the media organization’s work and the impact of increasing government pressure. The month before, 11 journalists had been jailed and the editorial offices of several outlets raided.
Tukhvatshin noted that legal proceedings against media outlets in Kyrgyzstan often target articles that are not actually the ones that irritated the authorities.
“Kyrgyz security services often start legal proceedings against a media outlet not based on the publication that actually drew their ire, but on based on some other older article that makes prosecution easier,” he said.
“That is the problem that the media in Kyrgyzstan currently face,” Tukhvatshin continued. “It is impossible to predict what will trigger the country’s authorities. It will probably lead to cases of severe self censorship in some media. We will try to do our best to avoid that.”
When asked what the diminishment of independent media in Kyrgyzstan would mean for the country, Tukhvatshin noted that it was average people who suffered more: “Independent media are actually the least vulnerable of government critics. More and more common social media users get jailed for criticizing authorities online. Recently several akyns (traditional poets) who used to criticize the government started praising it instead.
“There is an atmosphere of fear prevalent in the country.”