Law Targeting Foreign-Funded NGOs Sends Chill Through Kyrgyz Civil Society

ALMATY, Kazakhstan -- Kyrgyz President Sadyr Japarov has signed a controversial law allowing officials to register organizations as "foreign representatives," ending a decade-long campaign to pass a law echoing Russian legislation on "foreign agents."

That these efforts spanned three different Kyrgyz administrations -- one, albeit, cut short by political unrest -- has strengthened the belief of many that the law that will enter into force next week exemplifies Moscow's influence over its smaller, Central Asian ally.

But the move against foreign-funded civic groups also fits neatly with the political agenda of Japarov's power-centralizing government, which has already proven its willingness to crack down on critics harder and more often than its recent predecessors.

Neither of these trends portends well for local civil society or Kyrgyzstan's already tattered reputation as an exception in a deeply authoritarian region.

But for the career activists that now find themselves in the crosshairs of the new law, there are other questions to be asked -- both immediate and long-term.

'Now They Will Start Working Openly'

After signing the On Noncommercial Organizations law on April 2, Japarov hit back at suggestions by international advocacy groups that NGOs might be persecuted under the new legislation and accused local nonprofits of lying to their foreign partners about the intentions behind the bill.

Japarov's words in a Facebook post should probably be taken with a pinch of salt, though, given that he accompanied these comments with others about NGOs that were patently false -- including that such organizations had never before registered with the government or reported their earnings.

"Now they will start working openly," wrote the president, who did not provide any examples of these transgressions. "There won't be a mess like before."

Under the wording of the new law, local NGOs that receive foreign funding and carry out "political activities" in Kyrgyzstan will now be recognized as "performing the functions of a foreign representative" and should register as such.

This designation will make them eligible for unannounced inspections from law enforcement, which inevitably makes them more vulnerable to getting shut down.

Organizations carrying the "foreign representative" brand should, moreover, report quarterly to relevant government agencies on the use of funds received from abroad, as well as on their general activities and management every six months. Meanwhile, officials from the Justice Ministry will have the right to sit in on their meetings and events.

Dinara Oshurahunova, a longtime rights defender and election monitor, told RFE/RL that the main focus of the law would be "organizations that deal with political rights" like her own organization, Civic Initiatives, which monitors and works with parliament.

Now Oshurahunova has decided to begin the laborious process of liquidating her group, due to her belief that the foreign-representative designation will put staff at risk and lead to further degrees of discrimination and ostracization.

"The term 'political activities' can be applied to anything -- it can be applied to research, public polling, and activities that are enshrined as rights under the constitution. My organization informs citizens how to appeal to lawmakers, so that is a political activity. Training also qualifies as a political activity."

Dinara Oshurahunova

The law's text lists a number of spheres where NGO work would not be considered political, including science, culture, art, health care, and social support for disabled persons.

At the same time, it is unclear whether even organizations such as these, what Oshurahunova calls "social NGOs," will be able to pursue advocacy that could be construed as "forming public opinion" without earning the foreign-representative badge.

And the law's definition of "dissemination, including using modern information technologies, of opinions on decisions made by government bodies and policies" would appear to make it impossible for any media outlet registered as a nonprofit to apply for foreign grants without automatically becoming a "foreign representative."

There are currently around 29,000 noncommercial organizations of various types in Kyrgyzstan, more than half of which are registered in the capital, Bishkek.

More Cooperation With Russia, Less With Other Countries?

In addition to criticism from international rights organizations, the new law has been rebuked by the United States and the European Union.

Washington said the law "has the potential to limit or end the operation of organizations that are delivering critical assistance to the Kyrgyz people -- including U.S. assistance that is implemented by local and international NGOs."

The European Union said that "legislation that restricts civil society organizations' ability to operate freely could have a negative impact on the Kyrgyz society and their cooperation with international partners, like the European Union."

The New York-headquartered rights monitor Human Rights Watch on April 4 criticized the EU for "dithering" over the Kyrgyz bill, as well as failing to respond adequately to renewed attempts in fellow ex-Soviet republic Georgia to pass a similar law.

"The EU had ample opportunity to press the authorities to reject this bill. Kyrgyzstan benefits from privileged access to the EU internal market tied to respect for international human rights conventions: conventions this law clearly contravenes," the HRW wrote.

One country that the raft of international statements on the law will not bother much is Russia.

Moscow has openly railed against the "pro-Western, anti-Russian" activities of NGOs in neighboring countries, with Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu name-checking Central Asia in particular and noting in February that Moscow had taken "preventative measures" in the region.

Analyses of the Kyrgyz law carried out by the legal clinic Adilet and the media fact-checking outlet Factcheck.kg found that it had been overwhelmingly cribbed from the Russian "foreign agents" law passed in 2012.

In a report four years after the Russian law's passage, Amnesty International wrote that "more than a [100 Russian] organizations have seen their funding shrink, their reputations tarnished, and their staff intimidated," and reported that 27 of the 148 organizations that had been included on Russia's registry of foreign agents had disbanded over that period.

And there have been many more closures and liquidations since then.

From 'Foreign Representatives' To 'Undesirable Organizations'?

At the moment, there is a key difference between the Kyrgyz and Russian legal definitions.

That is because in 2022, just months after Moscow launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a new law that expanded the "foreign agent" net to include individuals instead of just organizations.

Kyrgyzstan has not gone that far yet, and lawmakers removed one of the most criticized aspects of the law -- stipulating punishment of NGO leaders and their staff of up to 10 years in prison in regards to particular crimes -- ahead of the final reading of the bill last month.

But civic activists see plenty of potential for copycatting in the near future.

Leila Nazgul Seiitbek, a Kyrgyzstan-born rights campaigner who chairs the Vienna-based Freedom for Eurasia nonprofit, points out that the Kyrgyz law in its current state would not be enough to prevent individual citizens cooperating with larger international rights groups.

"For this reason I think they may eventually pass an 'undesirable organizations' act, which Russia passed [in 2015] after the law on foreign agents," Seiitbek told RFE/RL. (Note: The Russian Justice Ministry has included Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty on its register of "undesirable organizations," a decision made by the Russian Prosecutor-General's Office on February 20.)

Nurbek Toktakunov, a human rights lawyer who has represented some of Kyrgyzstan's most famous political prisoners, agrees that the crackdown on civil society and free speech in Kyrgyzstan might not have peaked yet.

"Japarov and [national security chief Kamchybek] Tashiev are tough politicians. They tested us, and saw that people got frightened. And so they went a little further. They understood that our civil society is mostly cowardly, mostly just talk and grant-eating."

Toktakunov, whose rights organization Precedent has received money from Western donor organizations in the past, says he now plans to cease cooperation with foreign donors in order not to be subject to the law.

But that doesn't mean he is giving up his cause.

"I'm a citizen, which means I'm a politician. I'll keep criticizing. I'll search for internal resources to continue our work. I'll work with local businessmen. They need human rights and the rule of the law in Kyrgyzstan more than the West does. In fact, I think all of us Kyrgyz citizens need human rights and the rule of law," he told RFE/RL.

RFE/RL's Kyrgyz Service contributed to this report