More than 30 people accused of “organizing unrest and a coup” in Kyrgyzstan have been arrested, the GKNB intelligence service said on Tuesday.
“The State Committee for National Security of the Kyrgyz Republic exposed (…) the illegal activities of a group of people who had been secretly preparing to organize uprisings in the country with the aim of violent seizure of power,” one said Press release stating that the “more than 30 people arrested Monday have confessed”.
The leader of the non-parliamentary political party Eldik Kenech (People’s Council) has been accused by the GKNB of being the mastermind behind this group of more than 100 people and of having “organized secret meetings to discuss the plans”. seize power by force”.
The GKNB assures that the incriminated group “should soon receive funding from abroad”.
Videos released by local media on Monday showed gunmen arresting people. In the evening, the official Kabar news agency confirmed without further details that the GKNB carried out arrests.
Kyrgyzstan, a former Soviet republic allied with Russia and rapprochement with China, has experienced multiple political crises with three revolutions (2005, 2010, 2020) since the fall of the USSR in 1991.
These arrests come just days after European Council President Charles Michel’s visit to Kyrgyzstan, during which President Sadyr Japarov assured that he was “ready to work hand in hand with the European Union”.
While this mountainous country has long enjoyed relative media and political pluralism in a region where freedom of expression remains restricted, NGOs complain of increasing pressure on the media and civil society.
At the end of May, nationalist Adakhan Madoumarov, leader of the main opposition party in parliament and former presidential candidate, was prosecuted for “seditious sedition”, “seizure of power” and “abuse of power”. However, neither the public prosecutor’s office nor Parliament had specified what these allegations referred to.
But Mr Madoumarov is one of the main critical voices against a border deal with neighboring Uzbekistan that specifically envisages the use of a water reservoir, a crucial resource in this drought-stricken agricultural region.