Rare Good News for Central Asia's Beleaguered Journalists: Pavlyuk Murder Suspects Arrested
For once some good news for journalists comes out of Central Asia: the 10-month investigation into the brutal killing of Kyrgyz journalist Gennadiy Pavlyuk in Almaty
has finally made some progress. Police last week arrested two suspects in an Almaty restaurant, an Interior Ministry spokesman has said.
He gave no more details about the suspects or how they might have been involved in the murder last December, but the arrests will inspire some hope that Pavlyuk’s killers may eventually be tracked down.
This was a particularly brutal killing: Pavlyuk was hurled to his death from the sixth floor of an apartment block in Almaty with his hands and legs bound, and many of his colleagues suspected he’d been killed for his investigative reporting. Some sources said Pavlyuk – who wrote under the pseudonym Ibragim Rustambek for the independent Kyrgyz outlet Beliy Parus, and for the Kyrgyz editions of some Russian newspapers – had arrived in Almaty chasing a story, and the discovery of an empty laptop bag at the crime scene led many to believe that incriminating material that could have pointed to the murderer's identity may have been stolen.
The investigation into Pavlyuk’s death has been led by Kazakh police, who said publicly almost from the outset that they suspected Kyrgyz citizens of carrying out the murder. They did not confirm reports aired in the Kazakh media that they actually suspected some officers from Kyrgyzstan’s intelligence agency. Those reports did not bolster cooperation between Kyrgyz and Kazakh investigators. The investigation suffered a further setback from this year’s political and ethnic unrest in Kyrgyzstan. Pavlyuk’s killing caused an international outcry, and the lack of progress in the investigation was questioned most recently in a September 14 report by the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) that accused Kazakhstan of falling short in its commitments to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), which it is chairing this year.
Astana’s record on press freedom has continued to court controversy during its OSCE chairmanship. Media freedom campaigners highlight the imprisonment of Ramazan Yesergepov, who is serving a three-year prison term on charges of revealing state secrets, the blocking of websites containing dissenting views, the difficulties of the independent Golos Respubliki newspaper in accessing printing facilities, and the continued use of the courts to silence investigative journalists.
The news of progress in the Pavlyuk murder investigation sparks hope that the killers may be tracked down soon, allowing Kazakhstan to put them on trial and show that there’s no culture of impunity here for those who commit violence against journalists.
Joanna Lillis is a journalist based in Almaty and author of Dark Shadows: Inside the Secret World of Kazakhstan.
Sign up for Eurasianet's free weekly newsletter. Support Eurasianet: Help keep our journalism open to all, and influenced by none.