In recent years, forensic examinations in Kyrgyzstan have become one of the main tools used against independent journalists, activists, and other critics of the authorities. In many politically motivated cases, expert reports serve as the principal, and sometimes the only, evidence for the prosecution.
Human rights defender Gulshayyr Abdirasulova wrote in her 2024 report that this pattern is especially visible in cases involving mass riots, incitement of hatred, and public calls for the violent seizure of power. At the same time, some conclusions are questionable, and some of their authors lack the required accreditation.
A separate role, according to the article, has been played by so-called “political science examinations” prepared by staff of the National Academy of Sciences. Kyrgyz law does not recognize this type of examination, and the academy itself is not a forensic institution. Nevertheless, according to Abdirasulova, the academy carried out 148 examinations at the request of the security service and police in 2022 and the first half of 2023.
“In court proceedings on such criminal cases, expert conclusions act as the only evidence put forward by the prosecution,” Abdirasulova writes.
Former academy employee Zhoomart Karabaev said some reports had been written under pressure from the security services. According to his lawyer Kantemir Turaldiev, Karabaev was asked to state that social media posts contained calls for unrest, but he refused to alter his findings. Karabaev later publicly alleged pressure from law enforcement and was himself sentenced to three years of probation.
Problems also surfaced in other institutions. In December 2025, the State Committee for National Security said six employees of the Republican Center for Psychiatry and Narcology had been detained in a corruption case. Two of them had earlier appeared in proceedings against Kloop, and their report became the basis for the prosecution in the liquidation of one of the outlet’s legal entities.
The authors note that similar mechanisms have long been used in Kazakhstan and Russia, where expert opinions have also been deployed against opposition figures and civic activists. Against that backdrop, the article argues, Kyrgyzstan is not abandoning the practice but expanding the ways it can be used.