Kyrgyz Secret Services warn mass media of impermissibility of hotting up situation

The Kyrgyz National Security Service recommended the mass media, the public and political movements and parties and non-governmental organisations in the republic to refrain from making public non-checked information about the situation in the south of the republic.

As the RIA Novosti correspondent was told on Wednesday in the National Security Service, a number of the mass media "unobjectively cover the process and the content of the protest meeting" which has been going on since Monday in the regional town of Jalal-Abad. Many publications, as well as television and radio channels, both inside the country and abroad, intentionally overstate the number of the participants in the action.

For example, according to the data of the secret services, about 1,200 people took part in the unsanctioned meeting in Jalal-Abad on June 17-18, while some mass media cited the figure of about 8,000. All this, say the secret services, "negatively affects the inner political situation in Kyrgyzstan and cause various rumours" which can lead to "the further aggravation of the situation in the republic." At the present time the holding of mass actions of protest has been temporarily stopped in the south of the republic. Their participants have decided to wait for the answer from the authorities to the demands they put forth yesterday in their resolution: to fully acquit deputy of the Legislative Assembly of Kyrgyzstan Azimbek Beknazarov who was sentenced to one year of imprisonment for concealing a grave crime at the time when he worked as an investigator in the prosecutor's office eight years ago; to dismiss the republican prosecutor general; to launch criminal cases against high-ranking officials guilty of shooting the protest demonstration in the Aksy district and also to denounce the Kyrgyz-Chinese agreement in accordance with which 90,000 hectares of disputable territories were given to the neighbour state.

The mass protest actions in the south of the republic were caused by the arrest of deputy Beknazarov in January this year. The court of first instance sentenced him to one-year imprisonment. But taking into consideration his detention pending trial, the parliamentarian was released from custody directly in the building of the court. However, the criminal record deprives Beknazarov of the right to the deputy's mandate.