The head of Memorial’s Central Asian program, Vitaly Ponomarev, was not allowed into Kyrgyzstan, having been sent back from the Manas airport.
How stated The head of the human rights movement Bir Duino Kyrgyzstan, Tolekan Ismailova, did not give the reason for the deportation of the human rights activist, but he was banned from visiting the country twice over the past 15 years.
The ban was first introduced in 2009 and lifted in 2010 after the new president, Roza Otunbayeva, came to power in the wake of the revolution.
The second ban, for 5 years, was introduced in 2017, but its term has already expired.
“This is terrible management,” Ismailova complained, “when the new government is not guided by the legislation of the Constitution. The whole world will think that we have a situation where a well-known human rights activist is deported without explanation. They just put me on a plane and deported me.”
It should be noted that in November 2014, Ponomarev was also not allowed to enter Ukraine without explanation: then he noted that he had encountered similar bans in the “dictatorial regimes of the countries of Central Asia.”
SOTA (@sotaproject)
