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September 17, 2025 – Kyrgyzstan –
A court in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, has sentenced two former video editors of the independent Kloop media outlet—Zhoomart Duulatov and Alexander Alexandrov—to five years in prison on charges of spreading false information and undermining public order.
The pair were detained on May 28, 2025, during a broader operation that included raids on the homes of current and former Kloop staff. Equipment was seized. Their prosecution is widely seen by rights groups as part of a pattern of increasing pressure by authorities on independent journalism.
According to Kloop and defense lawyers, the charges are baseless. The videos cited by prosecutors—all said to be published originally by investigative journalist Bolot Temirov—did not, in their view, call for mass unrest. A key claim is that Duulatov and Alexandrov had no role in distributing or producing those videos. Moreover, court-appointed experts reportedly failed to find evidence supporting the charges of “mass unrest.”
In addition to the prison sentences for Duulatov and Alexandrov, two accountants at Kloop have been given suspended sentences. Critics are pointing out that the case closely mirrors earlier prosecutions of Temirov Live journalists—including the imprisonment of its director, Makhabat Tazhibek Kyzy (Temirov’s wife) in 2024—for ostensibly similar charges.
International media-freedom organisations such as the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) and rights groups have strongly condemned the verdicts, calling them politically motivated and demanding the immediate release of the convicted journalists. Kloop’s founder described the sentencing as “cannibalistic, senseless, and illogical.”
These developments come amid Kyrgyzstan’s continuing crackdown on dissenting voices. Since coming to power in 2020, President Sadyr Japarov’s administration has pushed a series of laws and actions tightening state control over media, including blocking websites, requiring registration for outlets, and prosecuting journalists under broadly interpreted charges like incitement or undermining public order.
In short, the imprisonment of Duulatov and Alexandrov marks another escalation in the shrinking space for independent journalism in Kyrgyzstan, raising sharp concerns about the future of press freedom in the country.
Reference –
https://eurasianet.org/two-more-journalists-jailed-in-kyrgyzstan-in-fresh-blow-to-press-freedom
Kyrgyzstan sentences two Kloop journalists to five years in jail on bogus charges
