The Bishkek city court gave the green light to the deal between the outlet and the Ministry of Culture, which had declared a video produced by Current Time, another branch of RFE/RL, about the Kyrgyz-Tajik border conflict last September as “inaccurate” and blocked Azattyk’s website in October.
Later that month, the Kyrgyz National Security Agency froze Azattyk’s bank account, citing money laundering regulations. In April, the Leninsky district court in Bishkek ruled in favor of the Ministry of Culture and permanently shut down Azattyk as a media organization in Kyrgyzstan.
Now, an agreement has been reached after RFE/RL informed Kyrgyzstan that the “disputed video is no longer available on RFE/RL websites” due to a new policy announced by the media outlet, which states that content will no longer be preserved indefinitely. It is unclear whether any other Azattyk videos have become unavailable.
On Wednesday, the Kyrgyz president’s press secretary, Erbol Sultanbayev, stated that RFE/RL’s new CEO, Jeffrey Gedmin, had informed the president that Azattyk had removed the video from all its platforms.
Sultanbayev noted that the same solution had been proposed to Gedmin’s predecessor at RFE/RL during a meeting with the Kyrgyz president in February of this year, but they had failed to reach an agreement at that time.
“This once again demonstrates that no one in the country is going to infringe on freedom of speech or discriminate against any media,” Sultanbayev said. “At the same time, I want to urge and remind everyone to strictly observe national legislation and not to disseminate false information.”
Source : OCCRP
