Is Kyrgyzstan's Bloodiest Ex-President Being Rehabilitated?

Almost a decade has passed since a Bishkek court sentenced Kyrgyzstan's second president to 30 years in jail for the murders of scores of protesters during the April 2010 revolution.

But now the Belarus-based ex-president, Kurmanbek Bakiev, might be about to make a highly controversial return to his Central Asian homeland -- this time as an investor.

Current President Sadyr Japarov is the third president in Kyrgyzstan to gain office after a predecessor's term was cut short by a political crisis.

But populist Japarov was a top-ranking member of the Bakiev regime who was ousted -- an adviser to the president and then his anti-corruption czar -- and went into opposition to the new government after the revolution that left more than 80 protesters dead.

In media comments on June 22, Japarov confirmed reports on social media about plans for the 74-year-old Bakiev to build a garment factory where relatives of the victims of the April 2010 shootings would be able to work.

At the same time, Japarov stressed, the initiative had come from the relatives themselves, who he said reached out to the Bakiev family with a request for compensation. An agreement for the factory was the result of the talks.

Does that mean the rehabilitation of Kyrgyzstan's bloodiest ex-president is now imminent?

The six presidents of Kyrgyzstan (left to right): Kurmanbek Bakiev, Askar Akaev, Roza Otunbaeva, Almazbek Atambaev, Sooronbai Jeenbekov, and Sadyr Japarov

If it is, it is unlikely to be popular, not least with other so-called Aprilites -- those involved in the 2010 protests -- who remain firmly opposed to any reconciliation with the authoritarian former leader.

Pax Kyrgyzus

Despite a giant crackdown on political opposition, independent media, and civil society, Japarov has portrayed himself as something of a peacemaker when it comes to what he calls Kyrgyzstan's "old wounds."

This positioning was embodied in his extraordinary achievement of hosting a meeting involving all five former Kyrgyz leaders in Dubai in February 2023.

"Of course the former presidents spoke bitter words, aired grievances, and admitted their mistakes. But most importantly they were able to forgive each other. This was my goal," Japarov said of the meeting at the time.

Whether or not they truly managed this, suspicions were aired that the gathering was more about rehabilitating one ex-leader in particular -- Japarov's former boss, Bakiev.

Japarov, however, insisted that was not the case. The talks would not have been able to take place in Bishkek, he said, because Bakiev has an outstanding conviction, meaning he would be arrested if he arrived on Kyrgyz soil.

Participants in a Kyrgyz opposition rally run for their lives during unrest in Bishkek on April 7, 2010.

But Japarov -- himself a former convict -- did not reinforce that point in his most recent comments about his former boss.

Instead, the head of state confirmed that he had twice received delegations from a public association consisting of Aprilites who had claimed to be in contact with the Bakievs.

"Looking at their situation, on the one hand, I felt sympathy for them. And on the other hand, I thought that if it is possible to help 200 families, then this is a good thing," Japarov told the state information agency Kabar, noting the poverty of many of the families.

He added that the land near Bishkek airport would be returned to the state if the investment did not happen.

That doesn't look likely for the moment.

The decision to allocate 1.6 hectares of land to the organization called April 7 Solidarity was rubber-stamped by the cabinet on May 29.

Private news agency AKIpress reported that the garment factory investment could total 1 billion soms (about $11.5 million).

When correspondents of RFE/RL's Kyrgyz Service visited the plot of land intended for the textile factory on June 26, they found that the area was already being transformed with heavy machinery.

Plant construction foreman Jenish Nusubaliev told the correspondents that work had begun about two weeks ago.

But to what extent does April 7 Solidarity truly represent the revolution's victims?

Whose 'Solidarity'?

According to the April 7 Solidarity's public registration documents, it was registered on April 8, 2024.

It is therefore not one of those Aprilite organizations that emerged soon after Bakiev's overthrow that became important lobbying groups before fading from the political scene.

The three founders of the group are a trio of men that share a single patronym: Bakytbekovich.

The group's leader and apparent spokesman is Usupbi Sherimbaev, who first went public with the news about the Bakiev-linked textile investment on Facebook on April 18.

Activist and convicted pedophile Usupbi Sherimbaev

In his video post, Sherimbaev suggested he had spoken to Bakiev directly, in Minsk, where he and other top members of the family are living in exile.

But when he spoke to RFE/RL's Kyrgyz Service on June 24, Sherimbaev conceded that the talks had instead been in Kyrgyzstan with children of the former president's brothers, whose names he did not provide.

The relative with whom Sherimbaev spoke "is the son of one of [Bakiev's] younger brothers. I don't know exactly whose son this is. It is not known how much money will be allocated for the construction of the factory. This will become known during construction," Sherimbaev said.

He further acknowledged that he could not have flown to Minsk anyway due to an outstanding conviction against him, the veracity of which he refutes.

The details of that court judgment were made public on Facebook by opposition politician Temirlan Sultanbekov several days before Japarov's comments to Kabar.

The conviction, said Sultanbekov, was for child molestation and was handed down in 2022.

But after spending some time in jail, Sherimbaev's eight-year sentence was inexplicably shortened and converted to a probation-like sentence instead.

Sultanbekov is presently the chairman of the opposition Social Democrats party, but he is also the secretary of a large group of April 7 relatives that joined forces shortly after Japarov held talks with some 200 Aprilites -- Sherimbaev among them -- at the beginning of the year.

Sultanbekov's group is firmly opposed to any rehabilitation of Bakiev or his regime.

"How can [authorities] allocate land for the construction of a factory by a person sentenced to 30 years' imprisonment in Kyrgyzstan?" Sultanbekov asked in an interview with RFE/RL's Kyrgyz Service. "How would they even invest the money? This money should be immediately confiscated!" the politician fumed.

The site near Bishkek allocated for the construction of a garment factory to employ relatives of Kyrgyz men and women killed during anti-government protests in June 2010

Belarus Exile

In Facebook postings, Sultanbekov speculated that Sherimbaev had agreed to the take on the role of a "prominent Aprilite" prepared to deal with Bakiev in exchange for an end to his "hopeless situation" in jail.

He provided no evidence of that claim.

Sultanbekov told RFE/RL that his group represented "10 out of 11" organizations set up by April 7 relatives and boasted a membership of up to 2,700 people.

April 7, 2010, was certainly a before-and-after in Kyrgyz politics.

The heavy human sacrifice -- not a feature of the Tulip Revolution that brought Bakiev to power five years earlier or the unrest that catapulted Japarov to the presidency in 2020 -- drove significant changes, even if corruption remained rampant and development slow-paced.

Under the constitution passed in a referendum in June 2010, the parliament was empowered and presidents were restricted to a single six-year term in office.

A decade later, Japarov took power less than two weeks after being freed from jail and oversaw the reversal of all those changes in another constitutional reform drive.

But he continues to publicly acknowledge the revolution's importance.

April 7 ended "family clan rule" and "showed that a government that does not take into account the will of the people is doomed to a short life and deprived of the future," Japarov said in an address on this year's anniversary.

After being overthrown, Bakiev and other key members of the former ruling family eventually fled to Belarus, with many alleging the family took millions of dollars in state funds with them.

Minsk sometimes looked like an awkward exile both for them and Belarusian President Alyaksandr Lukashenka.

And with Belarus joining Russia under Western sanctions over its support for Moscow's war in Ukraine, it has surely become even more awkward.

Lawyer Leila Nazgul Seiitbek, chairwoman of the Vienna-based NGO Freedom For Eurasia, argued that sanctions had "had an impact on Belarus's government and those associated with it," but she said she believes Japarov's regime is just as eager to bring Kyrgyzstan's second president back as Bakiev is to make a return.

"The ill-gotten money of the Bakievs will, of course, be a real asset to Japarov and Tashiev," Seiitbek told RFE/RL, referencing Kyrgyzstan's national security chief, Japarov's de facto co-ruler, and another Bakiev protege, Kamchybek Tashiev.

In this sense, the garment factory "served under the guise of reconciliation with the families of protesters who died in April 2010" may just be the tip of the iceberg, Seiitbek argued.