Lawmakers in Kyrgyzstan have adopted legislation they say is designed to protect children from “harmful information,” but which appears in part intended to marginalize minority communities. 

Freedom of expression advocates, meanwhile, have described the legislation as a crude effort at censorship.

With parliament having approved the legislation in second and third readings on June 22, it only remains for President Sadyr Japarov to sign off before the provisions become law.

The bill, which was authored by MP Jamilya Isayeva, is focused on online content and envision fines of up to around $290 for offenders. Isayeva’s definition of harmful material extends to information perceived to be undermining family values and anything promoting "non-traditional sexual relations" and "disrespect" toward parents.

More broadly, online resources deemed to be encouraging underage people to break the law, commit suicide, consume drugs and alcohol, or engage in gambling, prostitution or vagrancy are also criminalized. 

Officials at the Digital Development Ministry say they have already made preparations in advance of this legislation entering into force. Speaking to reporters earlier this month, Zhibek Abdullayeva, the head of the ministry’s regulatory body, said the Kyrgyz government intends to liaise with tech giant Meta, the company behind Facebook, to block information detrimental to children. 

“Five people have been appointed … who speak English well and have been given the right by Meta to block certain pages. If the Culture Ministry decides that this or that information is inappropriate, then these five people have the right to restrict the specified content,” Abdullayeva said.

Activists are neither convinced nor impressed by such claims.

On June 22, the Media Policy Institute, an organization that campaigns for press freedoms, disseminated a statement in which it argued that the Digital Development Ministry appeared to have “misunderstood” how Meta works. The institute noted that Meta removes posts according to its own uniform standards and not by liaising with individual governments.

Turning to the draft bill, the Media Policy Institute said this was simply as an attempt to give the government another tool to enforce censorship but under the guise of protecting children.

“The bill is another administrative lever for establishing censorship and arbitrary restriction of citizens’ access to information. The goal of creating a safe information environment for children declared by the initiators [of the bill] is just populism,” the Media Policy Institute concluded.

Opponents of the bill have urged President Japarov to reject it and send it back to parliament for further revision. 

But such calls may fall on deaf ears. Isayeva, the author of the legislation, makes no secret of the fact that it was Japarov who first inspired her campaign.

It was, after all, Japarov who pushed, after he came to power in October 2020, for an overhauled constitution that would promote "spiritual" and "traditional" values. In 2021, the president approved another contentious bit of law that required schools and universities to teach pupils about traditional culture, as well as spiritual, moral and family values.