Woe Unto Atambayev

Former Kyrgyz President Almazbek Atambayev was removed from court twice in the span of three days in April after disrupting the proceedings by shouting and kicking the plexiglass cage where he was held. Atambayev’s complaints were related to his health, which he claimed was poor and should have kept him out of court, but his cries of “shame” may as well have been directed to the situation writ large.

Whatever Atambayev’s sins, in 2022 he’s trapped in a vortex of Kyrgyz political hypocrisy.

The proceedings Atambayev disrupted last month were for charges of attempting to seize power during the October 2020 protests. A previously jailed Kyrgyz politician did seize power after the protests, but it wasn’t Atambayev.

Who Seized Power in October 2020?

On October 4, Kyrgyzstan held a regularly scheduled parliamentary election. The results – in which only four of 16 parties made it into parliament, two of which were tightly linked to the government of President Sooronbay Jeenbekov – so shocked voters that protests began immediately. As the protests persisted through the evening of October 5 and into the night, a number of imprisoned Kyrgyz politicians were busted out of jail in Bishkek.

At the time, Atambayev, Jeenbekov’s predecessor as president, was in detention over a bevy of charges, and engaged in two ongoing trials: One over the 2013 early release of a notorious Chechen gangster from prison and another over Atambayev’s defiance of subpoenas related to the first case, which resulted in a deadly standoff with authorities in August 2019. The first case had resulted in a conviction and sentence of 11 years in June 2020 (but was sent for retrial in December 2020).

Atambayev was among those sprung from jail in the night between October 5 and 6.

A few days later, on October 9, Atambayev and other prominent politicians – including Omurbek Babanov and Sapar Isakov – joined protesters in Bishkek’s Ala-Too Square. At a nearby square, supporters of another recently (illegally) released politician, Sadyr Japarov, gathered. As the groups converged, fists and stones were thrown. As Atambayev left the square, an unknown person allegedly fired a gun at his car.

On October 14, Japarov succeeded in maneuvering himself into a top position: acting prime minister. The next day, he motivated Jeenbekov to resign from the presidency, with the threat of violence looming as Japarov’s supporters mobbed Bishkek. In resigning, Jeenbekov declared his desire to avoid bloodshed. Soon after Japarov was acting president, too. His takeover was completed with a January 2021 election and a new president-forward constitution to boot.

Justice For Thee, But Not For Me

One of Japarov’s shticks is harkening back to his 2017 arrest on kidnaping charges, or the prison time he served for attempting to seize power during a 2012 Kumtor nationalization protest, to cultivate sympathy as a wrongfully persecuted (and prosecuted) man. Amid the chaos of early October 2020, the Kyrgyz Supreme Court overturned his convictions on account of never-explained “new circumstances.” The move cleared the way for his ascension to power.

In November 2021, when Kyrgyzstan finally held parliamentary elections again, Japarov voted for Ravshan Dzheenbekov (his ballot faced reporters as he submitted it, allowing his vote to be seen clearly). Dzheenbekov was at the time in detention pending trial in the criminal case related to the August 2019 standoff at Atambayev’s compound. He’d been released alongside Atambayev and returned to prison shortly after, too.

Japarov gave a roundabout explanation for his vote via a social media post: “Dzheenbekov is in prison, like me in 2017. I also applied for participation in the presidential elections of 2017. But Atambayev did not allow me to run in those elections. Ravshan is participating.” Japarov also wrote, “The court decides whether he is guilty or not. None of us has the right to interfere in their affairs.”

Dzheenbekov was released from detention in December 2021, though the charges are still pending. In March 2022, Kyrgyz authorities raided a TV station, NEXT TV, owned by Dzheenbekov, for covering claims made by a former Kazakh official. The former official had claimed that Kyrgyzstan had agreed to support Russia in Ukraine militarily. Japarov has been strident in his personal support for Russia, although the official Kyrgyz state position is more neutral.

This aside illustrates that while Japarov has weaponized his own perceived persecution, it hasn’t affected the arbitrary nature of justice in Kyrgyzstan. There’s no logic beyond power, position, and the needs of the moment.

No Hope for Atambayev

In July 2021, Kyrgyz authorities announced new charges to be levied against Atambayev and his associates for fueling “a negative and aggressive mood in the crowd” at Ala-Too on October 9, 2020, which led to fights and, according to the state, represented an attempt to seize power illegally.

The trajectory for Omurbek Babanov highlights the absurdity of the situation. Babanov had been detained in May 2021 in relation, somehow, to the Kumtor mess but was also named in the complaint about the October 9 protest. He was then allowed to leave Kyrgyzstan to seek medical treatment abroad in early July 2021 and has laid low since. Babanov was once named in a survey of Kyrgyz public opinion as the country’s most trusted politician; it was expedient for Japarov to shove him out of the country rather than into jail.

Atambayev, however, has not been allowed to head into exile. The former president has consistently complained of various medical issues since his 2019 arrest and continues to do so. Regardless of the severity or truth of his health issues, Atambayev has got to be sick of the hypocrisy swirling around him. This isn’t a judgment of whether he is guilty or not of the various crimes of which he’s been accused, but rather a statement of the fact that his guilt or innocence isn’t really what the Kyrgyz justice system is considering.

It’s useful to have a bad guy on hand on whom to pin blame. And Atambayev, who had a particularly combative political persona, serves that purpose well for Japarov. No sense in letting him go now.