As the world marks International Human Rights Day, there is little to celebrate in Kyrgyzstan. President Sadyr Japarov’s administration has been systematically cracking down on dissenting voices, including detaining leading members of the Social Democrats party, one of the last remaining opposition parties, ahead of last month’s municipal elections.
The detained party leader, 26-year-old Temirlan Sultanbekov, chief campaigner, Irina Karamushkina, and party member, Roza Tyurksever, were arrested on vote-buying allegations, with an audiotape of unknown origin serving as the primary evidence. Sultanbekov explained the money being discussed in the recording were salaries of party campaigners, the amounts tallying with job advertisements for the roles.
The Bishkek Territorial Election Commission subsequently disqualified all of the party's municipal candidates.
On November 15, a Bishkek district court ordered that the party officials be held in pretrial detention until January 13, 2025. That same day, party leader Sultanbekov began a hunger strike in protest. According to his lawyer, weeks into the strike the physical effects are showing and Sultanbekov has visibly lost weight, a lower body temperature, worsened eyesight, and has developed blue spots on his hands and feet.
This is not the first time Japarov’s administration has sought to neutralize opposition parties. In 2022 the Ata-Meken party was pacified by appointing its leader, Omurbek Tekebayev as an ambassador, while in March this year Adakhan Madumarov, leader of Butun Kyrgyzstan party, lost his seat in parliament on a decade-old treason charge. More than twenty government critics were charged with fomenting mass unrest and attempting to seize power by force after peacefully campaigning against part of a border demarcation deal with Uzbekistan in October 2022. Although all were acquitted in June 2024, nearly half spent 20 months in pretrial detention.
This year has also witnessed unprecedented attacks on media and civil society. In August, the Kyrgyz Supreme Court upheld the liquidation of Kloop Media and in October, four journalists from Temirov Live, an investigative platform, were criminally prosecuted. A Russian-style law on “foreign representatives” also came into force this year.
As Kyrgyzstan marks International Human Rights Day, the government should use the occasion to change course and uphold fundamental rights and freedoms. That would be something genuinely worth celebrating.