Though big news agencies like Akipress do not report about it or do so only sketchily, recent events in Kyrgyzstan indicate that people in this liberal hotbed on Central Asia start once again to mobilize for protest. So far those indicators are not too many and they seem neither coordinated not professionally organized. However, comparing the situation with spring in 2009 or 2008 it looks like the impact of such mobilization might be different this time.
This difference becomes visible if one observes the fight between the administration of the authoritarian Kyrgyz state and liberal or reform-oriented social forces for the control over new media. Political events in Kyrgyzstan are usually reduced in official news services to short head-lines if mentioned at all (at least since end-2007). With new media establishing itself in Central Asia, alternative sources exist to report about incidents in the region. And my impression is that people make use of this alternative and start building up new networks that help to formulate public opinion and, in the long run, eventually will lead to coordinated attempts to publicly articulate it.
Recently human rights activists in Kyrgyzstan launched a series of legal procedures to question repressive regulations regarding the right of assembly and criticize the energy policy of the government. The latter had introduced new tariffs for energy and water supply in January, causing a public outcry among people in the republic who often barely manage to meet basic needs. This outcry now seems to take the shape of protest as indicated by first meetings in the town of Naryn in the East of Kyrgyzstan.
Last week events turned international when one of the top advisors to the president’s son, Maksim Bakiev, was declared wanted by an Italian court. Evgenii Gurevich, former head of the consulting and investment firm ‘MGN Group’ and one of the directors of the Kyrgyz Asian Universal Bank in the past, is accused of being involved in large scale money laundering for the Calabrian mafia (N’Drangheta). Gurevich has been active coordinating investment projects in the Kyrgyz Republic, overseeing the privatization process of the energy sector and assisting in reforms of the country’s economy. He is the deputy head of the newly formed state body ‘Central Agency for Development, Investment and Innovation that claims responsibility for all investment activities in the Republic and is headed by Maksim Bakiev. After the warrant was issued Gurevich left his position and announced his full cooperation with the Italian LEA to clear his name.
For the opposition this last event was just the public confirmation of long-developed suspicions that president Bakiev and his family are privatizing the country’s assets to enrich themselves. Raising its voice, the opposition, for the first time in many months, finds itself in the advantageous position to get its message through to a frustrated population. This seems to be possible not least because of new media, the Internet, to distribute information and get connected. On-line forums, E-mail lists, alternative news website and on-line newspapers, Twitter and Facebook, seem to offer new chances to network and exchange ideas and opinions. A basic guarantee to actually build up coordinate efforts to articulate alternative political agendas. And, if wished for, to organize political action.
The powers-that-be are not watching motionlessly. Recent reports from observers tell about disruption in browser connections, websites that carry oppositional opinions are being blocked. Attempts to send out information about events in Kyrgyzstan to the outer public are being disturbed and chances for the public to inform itself are being hindered. The interferences are even getting official when local radio stations stop the transmission of the Kyrgyz Broadcasting Service of Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty, ‘Azattyk’, as has been reported recently. The difference this time seems to be that it appears not to be a single event without any further reverberations. But it presents itself as one event in a whole chain of events that further structure a new line of contention between political opponents:
It thus helps to inform observers that struggle is on its way and is developing. And it thus offers others to position themselves and formulate an opinion.
The fact that the event present itself among other similar events and can be observed as such speaks of the inefficient response of the government to interfere in oppositional plans (from the government’s point of view). Usually events are made single occurrences; chances to discursively connect them are repressed. If people are enabled to tell coherent stories of political developments they can, as mentioned before, position themselves and start reflecting. Such opportunities must be repressed cause they can cause danger to an authoritarian regime. This time the government faces a situation, where its attempts to repress become just other events in a line of events. The isolation of events becomes more difficult.
A typical reaction is more repression. This weekend another young, reform-oriented activist, Timur Shaikhutdinov, was attacked and beaten up by unknown assailants. Most observers believe that the attack is politically motivated and aims at preventing Shaikhutdinov to pursue his protest against the decision of the major telecommunication companies in Kyrgyzstan to raise tariffs for mobile connections:
What was planned as a protest against companies turned political once the activists, next to Shaikhutdinov, Urmat Kazakbaev, and Gul’shajyr Abdrasulova, planned to hold a protest in front of the White House, the government’s seat. Demonstrations to government buildings are forbidden in Kyrgyzstan in accord with a very repressive law on the right of assembly. The activists sued the city administration which denied their request to organize a picket. The court rejected their claim which leads to the matter becoming even more political.
Next Wednesday the opposition plans to organize a meeting, a so called Kurultay, to gather people from all over Kyrgyzstan to articulate protest and shape political opinion and bring forward political claims. The city tries to prevent this event from becoming a public one but seems to be unsure of how to do so. At least Major Tuleev did not outright forbid it but tries to persuade the oppositioners to shift it from the central square Ala-Too to one of the main buildings, like the Philarmonia. It will now be interesting to observe how the opposition will handle the delicate situation and if the effect of the new media, connecting people and offering chances to formulate an opinion, can already translate into collective action on the streets.
