Kyrgyzstan

Kyrgyzstan held peaceful presidential elections in October 2017. Yet the deterioration in media freedoms that began in advance of the election, and shortcomings in judicial independence and law enforcement accountability, erode Kyrgyzstan’s democratic progress. Several foreign human rights workers and a foreign correspondent have been banned from Kyrgyzstan. Authorities continue to deny justice to victims of the June 2010 inter-ethnic violence in southern Kyrgyzstan and wrongfully keep human rights defender Azimjon Askarov imprisoned, despite the March 2016 UN Human Rights Committee ruling that he should be released. Kyrgyzstan strengthened its domestic violence law, but should do more to end widespread occurrence of this abuse.