Another Kyrgyz journalist accused of being an “enemy of the people”

On 27 May, Kyrgyzstan’s main television channel ran an eight-minute item with the provocative title of “Fireraisers”. The programme accused Ulugbek Babakulov, a correspondent for our news agency, of inciting racial hatred. It then went on to call Fergana “tendentious”, and demand that our site be blocked in Kyrgyzstan. 

The trigger for this story was an article we published on 23 May concerning ultra-nationalist material on Kyrgyz social media. The programme accused us of “disseminating material of an inflammatory nature” and trying to present Kyrgyzstan as “a fascist state populated entirely by nationalists”. 

The news item included several extracts from Babakulov’s article, suggesting that Babakulov should face “strict criminal justice”, and opinions on the subject from “experts”. The latter were united in their view that journalists should “avoid controversial subjects” and not “drag up some sort of analysis from social media sites”.