One of Kyrgyzstan’s most influential opposition parties has accused the government of seeking its destruction following the arrest of its leader, Adakhan Madumarov.

Butun Kyrgyzstan said in a September 4 statement it would continue to criticize the authorities despite being targeted with “threats and pressure.”

The prospect of Madumarov’s arrest at the hands of Interior Ministry special forces troops, which occurred on September 2, has long lingered in the air. In May, prosecutors petitioned parliament to strip Madumarov of the immunity he enjoyed as an MP.

That onslaught appeared to be a response to the politician’s outspoken stance against a border delimitation deal concluded last year between Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan that saw the latter gain effective control over a strategically important water reservoir. Prosecutors dangled the possibility of three potential criminal charges: fomenting mass riots, plotting to seize power, and abuse of office.

Last week’s arrest is linked to the most historic of those alleged offenses. Madumarov’s lawyer said it was based on accusations of high treason over the MP’s involvement in a 2009 land lease agreement reached with Tajikistan. 

That charge was first advanced by the General Prosecutor’s Office in February. It was later downgraded to abuse of office and allowed to lie dormant until this month. 

Investigators claimed that while holding a post of Secretary of the Security Council in 2009, Madumarov met on multiple occasions with a Tajik delegation. At one of those meetings, Madumarov concluded a deal unfavorable to Kyrgyzstan by agreeing to take out a lease of five hectares of land from Tajikistan on which a bridge and an important linking road were later built, they say.

Prosecutors argue that since the land in question was at the time still disputed, the lease agreement would go on to complicate negotiations on border delimitation since it implied that the Tajiks had legitimate legal claims to it.

Madumarov has defended his role in that arrangement, saying that it ensured residents of towns and villages deep in the southwest-most pocket of Kyrgyzstan free access between their homes and the rest of the country. The lease agreement in no way assigned the land to Tajikistan and should not have affected border negotiations, he has said.

Butun Kyrgyzstan has in any case contended that resurrecting this entire episode is wholly pretextual and aimed at neutralizing their role as critics of the rule of President Sadyr Japarov. 

Madumarov is a long-time fixture on the Kyrgyz political scene. In 2021, Madumarov stood against Japarov in the presidential election, coming a distant second with 6.8 percent of votes cast.

As leader of Butun Kyrgyzstan, he has not shied from criticizing either Japarov or his powerful ally, Kamchybek Tashiyev, the head of the State Committee for National Security, or GKNB.

Although Madumarov was taken into custody by the police, he was subsequently placed in a pre-trial detention facility run by the GKNB. He is to remain there until October 24 at the very earliest.

Tashiyev has made a point of making it unlikely Madumarov gets a fair hearing in the courts by writing on Facebook on the day of the arrest that the authorities were prepared to deal “toughly” with citizens accused of treason. 

“There will be no mercy for anyone who betrays the state, for anyone who tries to destroy it. The reaction of the security forces to such citizens will be tough,” he wrote, without referencing Madumarov by name.

Lawmakers in the increasingly malleable parliament did their bit to make this arrest possible. Complying with a request from the General Prosecutor’s Office, 61 out of 90 MPs voted in June to strip their colleague of immunity from prosecution.