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Bishkek, Paris, 12 December 2025 - The
Observatory for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders, a partnership
of the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) and the World
Organisation Against Torture (OMCT), strongly condemns the politically
motivated refusal by the Kyrgyzstani authorities to allow a delegation
of FIDH representatives into Kyrgyzstan.
On the early morning of 12 December 2025, Kyrgyzstani border guards at
the Manas International Airport in Bishkek denied three FIDH
representatives scheduled to participate in a leading human rights film
festival entry into the territory of Kyrgyzstan.
The border officials confiscated the passports of all FIDH delegates
and provided no motivated explanation or written notification detailing
the reasons for the denial. Subsequently, all three delegates were
escorted to the next flights, forced to return to their origin airports,
where they received their passports back. The absence of legal grounds
and formal procedure effectively blocks any avenue to appeal the
decision.
The delegation members were scheduled to participate in the 19th
International Human Rights Documentary Film Festival organised by FIDH’s
Kyrgyz member organisation, Bir Duino, which is taking place from 12 to
16 December 2025 in Bishkek, alongside other reputable human rights
experts from the region. The program includes several workshops focused
on the alarming human rights situation in the Kyrgyz Republic.
The refusal to allow FIDH delegates into the country comes ten days
after the Russian Federation included FIDH in the register of
“undesirable organisations”, a decision condemned by the UN Special
Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Russian Federation.
The Observatory strongly underlines that this decision by the
Kyrgyzstani authorities not only constitutes as a serious breach of
Kyrgyzstan’s international obligations, including rights to freedom of
movement, expression, and association, but also as a demonstration of
alarming complicity with Russia’s campaign of repression against civil
society and human rights defenders. It is also a direct attack on the
work of FIDH’s Kyrgyzstani member organisations, who continue their
legitimate work against government repression in a climate of increasing
fear and hostility.
The Observatory expresses its grave concern and urgently calls upon the Kyrgyzstani authorities to:
1. Immediately provide a full, official, and legally sound
justification for the denial of entry and the deportation of FIDH’s
delegation;
2. Allow immediate and unrestricted access to all human rights
defenders possessing valid documentation into the country, refraining
from any form of politically motivated discrimination;
3. Immediately cease all measures demonstrating complicity in
Russia’s repression against civil society and human rights defenders,
specifically against organisations and individuals labelled as “foreign
agents” or “undesirable;
4. At all times uphold Kyrgyzstan’s obligation not to extradite
individuals to countries where they face risks of torture or other forms
of ill-treatment, such as the Russian Federation, Belarus, and others;
and
5. Immediately cease all repressive measures that restrict, silence
and stigmatise the legitimate work of Kyrgyz civil society organisations
and human rights defenders inside the country, and ensure full respect
of the country’s international human rights obligations, particularly
regarding the rights to freedom of movement, freedom of association, and
freedom of expression as enshrined in the International Covenant on
Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and other international human rights
instruments.
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