Reporters Without Borders said it was extremely shocked at the death today of Kyrgyzstan journalist Gennady Pavlyuk who was thrown from a sixth floor window in Almaty, Kazakhstan on 16 December. Police confirmed he had been found at the foot of the building with his hands and feet bound.

The worldwide press freedom organisation expressed its deep sympathy with his family and colleagues.

The fatal attack, this time in a neighbouring country, is the third in a week launched against Kyrgyzstan journalists of Russian origin. Political analyst Alexander Knyazev was attacked in the capital Bishkek on 9 December and the correspondent for Russian news agency BaltInfo, Alexander Evgrafov, was struck and threatened by uniformed police on 15 December.

“Ten days ahead of taking over the presidency of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), the Kazakh authorities cannot allow a murder like this to go unpunished and the Kyrghiz side must cooperate in resolving this case”, the organisation said.

“It is impossible at the moment to establish a direct link between the murder of Gennady Pavlyuk and the two previous assaults, even if a vocal minority has wanted to give the impression that it was a concerted plan. But in any event, the exploitation of these attacks in the interests of a strategy of nationalist and political tension is unacceptable. Journalists cannot go on being taken hostage by the extreme polarisation of Kyrgyzstan political life”.

“President Kurmanbek Bakiyev’s stranglehold on the public debate stifling any space for free expression is contributing to the radicalisation of opposition forces and exacerbating tension. All political forces should immediately renounce the use of violence against journalists”, it added.

Following the assaults against Alexander Knyazev and Alexander Evgrafov, several Kyrghiz media received an email claiming responsibility and containing threats against minorities, particularly Russian, viewed as being supporters of the former president Askar Akayev. The Russian press raised an outcry that “journalists with links to Russia” appeared to be targeted in a “terror campaign”. Pavlyuk was, like the other two targeted journalists, a Russian Kyrghiz believed to be close to the opposition.

The press office of the Kyrghiz interior ministry on 18 December confirmed that Pavlyuk had been found two days earlier unconscious at the foot of a building on Furmanov Street, in the heart of the Kyrghiz capital. His rescuers found that he had multiple fractures and a serious head injury with internal bleeding. They concluded that he had been thrown from a fifth or sixth floor window. He was then said to be critically ill at the trauma department of Almaty’s central clinic.

Pavlyuk had recently become close to the opposition party Ata Meken, for which he was planning to create a website and a weekly news bulletin.

A number of questions remain unanswered, starting with the reason for which the journalist had gone to Almaty. It is not known whether he had an appointment in the building or if he had been taken there against his will, as believed by representatives of Ata Meken who travelled there at the weekend. Police in Almaty have opened a criminal investigation.

A known independent, Pavlyuk made his reputation as editor of the Kyrghiz edition of the Russian newspaper Argumenty i Fakty, under the regime of the former president Askar Akayev. Highly critical of the new government that emanated from the “tulip revolution” in 2005, the journalist at one time thought of leaving the country. Using the pseudonym Ibraguim Rustambek, he then became editor of the Kyrghiz edtion of Komsomolskaya Pravda, and one of the best known writers for the independent newspaper Bely Parokhod, editing its online version.

Bely Parokhod cast a highly critical eye on cases of corruption linked to the privatisation of energy companies. For the last year, the newspaper’s editor, Yelena Avdeeva, complained of pressure from the “energy barons”. The paper’s website was regularly being made inaccessible and the site frequently had to change its address, while the print version was renamed Bely Parus in anticipation of legal proceedings.

Nationalist rhetoric has deeply infected the political discourse in Kyrghzstan, which has been independent since 1991. It is deployed as much by the ruling party – which has just made it compulsory to stand up when the national anthem is played — as by an opposition that has been quick to condemn the monopoly on power of people from the south of the country.

http://www.rsf.org/spip.php?page=article&id_article=35416