A move to ban a popular, independent news outlet in Kyrgyzstan is dredging up bad memories among local rights activists. With the framework of checks and balances on legislative authority still ill-defined, activists worry the precedent is a sign of peril for the Central Asian nation’s experiment in parliamentary democracy.
In another grim sign for foreign investors in Kyrgyzstan, a parliamentary probe into operations at the Kumtor gold mine has some experts worried that officials are angling to nationalize one of the Central Asian country’s most valuable assets.
After 18 years on the police force, Major A. has a good relationship with his superiors: If he slips his supervisor a little cash, he says, he is excused from work and free to earn money at his second job, driving a taxi around Kyrgyzstan’s capital, Bishkek.
As the ouster of former president Kurmanbek Bakiyev demonstrated last spring, Russia is not afraid of meddling in Kyrgyzstan when the Kremlin feels its interests are at risk. These days, Moscow appears to be using energy exports as leverage against the Kyrgyz government.
Kyrgyzstan’s new government shows little interest in improving inter-ethnic relations, while the international community is slow to learn the lessons of last summer’s violent clashes in southern regions, according to a recently released report on the Osh violence.
The tradition of the kurultai, or occasional popular assembly, in Kyrgyzstan stretches back to the days when Turkic and Mongol nomads roamed the Central Asian steppe. Now some Kyrgyz officials are agitating for the formal incorporation of the kurultai into the political process.
With the approach of spring, Kyrgyzstan’s traditional season for airing public grievances, food prices are skyrocketing. Many now fear that rapid inflation could spark fresh instability and street protests. While some officials want to impose price controls, economists warn that such action could foster shortages.
A push to assert the predominance of the Kyrgyz language in Kyrgyzstan is gaining traction. But the trend is angering Russian-speakers, who complain that efforts to promote Kyrgyz are coming at the expense of their constitutional rights.
A seemingly innocuous suggestion to allocate time and space for Kyrgyz MPs to observe Islam’s traditional Friday prayers has produced a furor with implications for mosque-state separation. Opponents say the measure threatens to erode the concept of secularism enshrined in Kyrgyzstan’s constitution.
