The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) is proudly honoring Bolot Temirov, Kyrgyzstan’s seasoned and relentlessly courageous investigative reporter, at its International Press Freedom Awards.
Temirov, the driving force behind Central Asia’s most prominent anti-corruption outlet, Temirov Live, now operates from an undisclosed location in exile, a testament to the grave threats to his safety and the intense pressure faced by independent media in his homeland.
Despite being forcibly removed from his country, his YouTube-based platform continues its vital work, publishing hard-hitting investigations that scrutinize the highest echelons of power, including the president, making his team a primary target in an unprecedented government-led crackdown on press freedom.
Temirov’s journey to exile is a stark narrative of judicial harassment and blatant fabrication. In a 2022 raid on his newsroom that was broadcast to the world, Kyrgyz police are widely believed to have planted drugs on him in a brazen attempt to silence his reporting.
While he was ultimately acquitted of these charges—following an astonishing Temirov Live investigation that exposed the police’s own actions—the state’s retaliation was not over. He was subsequently stripped of his citizenship and expelled from the country, a drastic measure aimed at severing his connection to the nation he reports on.
The campaign against his outlet has only intensified, reaching a harrowing crescendo in 2024 with the arrest of 11 current and former Temirov Live staff members.
In a particularly cruel blow, Temirov’s wife and the director of Temirov Live, Makhabat Tazhibek Kyzy, remains behind bars, serving a six-year prison sentence on what are universally decried as trumped-up charges.
This award shines an international spotlight not only on Bolot Temirov’s extraordinary personal courage but also on the systematic dismantling of press freedom in Kyrgyzstan, a country once considered an island of democracy in Central Asia.
By honoring Temirov, the CPJ is amplifying the story of a journalist who refuses to be silenced, even as his family and colleagues pay a heavy price for the truth.
His work from exile stands as a defiant beacon, proving that the pursuit of accountability cannot be confined by borders, and that the power of investigative journalism persists even when its practitioners are hunted, exiled, and imprisoned.
