Rights group Amnesty International has sounded the warning over the worsening state of civil society in Kyrgyzstan, once considered a relative beacon of democracy in the region, as the government shows little sign of relenting in its campaign to stifle critical voices.

In a statement published on January 8, the rights group noted how journalists and activists have increasingly been targeted with arbitrary detentions and smear attacks on social media.

Elsewhere, the authorities have maneuvered malleable lawmakers into drafting legislation designed to undermine rule of law and restrict freedom of expression, the group said.

“The developments of the last 18 months … put… civil society’s future in peril and severely threaten Kyrgyzstan’s reputation and record on human rights and its international cooperation,” Amnesty said in its statement.

Particular alarm has been generated by a slew of ongoing and historic legislative initiatives.

One is a so-called “foreign representatives” law. In its current form, this bill requires any organizations receiving funding from abroad for the purpose of what government bodies deem to be political activity to register as “foreign representatives.” Any organization failing to adopt that label within a six-month window could face closure.

Critics and international rights monitors complain that oversight rules will be onerous. Annual accounting reports will be subject to audits, and nongovernmental organizations, or NGOs, will have to regularly provide the government with a detailed breakdown on their work, management structure and spending. For smaller NGOs, the costs entailed in hiring additional staff needed to conform with these requirements may be unsustainable, critics say.

Amnesty says the bill as currently worded could cause extensive harm.

The “vague, expansive, and ambiguous language gives the authorities excessively discretionary powers to target NGOs for carrying out their legitimate work, including advocacy on public policies that affect the whole spectrum of human rights, including the right to a healthy environment,” Amnesty said.

Another piece of legislation that has had a chilling effect was the false information law approved by President Sadyr Japarov in August 2021.

The sponsor of the legislation, MP Gulshat Asylbayeva, said at the time that her intent was to tackle the issue of false social media profiles and troll operations distributing misleading information to undermine political figures in Kyrgyzstan. The law envisioned a regulatory body tasked with responding to grievances about online content within a 48-hour timeframe.

In one instance of how accusations of propagating false information are serving to cow journalists, the Culture Ministry in September ordered the blocking of independent news website Kloop after it published a report alleging that a jailed opposition politician, Ravshan Jeenbekov, was being abused at his pre-detention facility. Culture Ministry officials claimed that the piece contained “unreliable information,” although it did not specify how.

Amnesty said Kyrgyz authorities should “stop the harassment and intimidation of journalists and government critics, and fully respect, protect and fulfill the right to freedom of expression for all media in Kyrgyzstan in accordance with international human rights law.”

“They should also step up efforts to disseminate reliable, accessible, evidence-based and trustworthy information, which is crucial to counter false and misleading information and to build trust among the population in the integrity and reliability of the journalistic environment,” the group’s statement said.