Purely authoritative

The President of Kyrgyzstan will meet with the parents of Ryspek Akmatbaev

Today, President of Kyrgyzstan Kurmanbek Bakiyev will receive in Bishkek the parents of the famous crime boss Ryspek Akmatbaev, who was killed on May 10. This became known yesterday after a meeting between the father and mother of the murdered man with Kyrgyzstan's Secretary of State Madumarov, Prosecutor General Kongantiev and Deputy Head of the Presidential Administration Abdyldaev. The meeting, which lasted more than two hours, was also attended by representatives of a large rally that began the day after Akmatbayev's funeral in his hometown of Balykchi (formerly Rybachy) in Issyk-Kul. The fellow countrymen of the deceased demanded that Prime Minister Kulov and the head of the Ministry of Internal Affairs Sutalinov resign. With these slogans, the protesters blocked the strategic highway connecting Issyk-Kul with Bishkek for almost three days, slaughtered sheep, and held funeral feasts in memory of their fellow countryman.

At yesterday's meeting, his relatives and associates called the murder of Ryspek Akmatbaev a “political order”, and the orderer was Felix Kulov. Let us recall that in early April, rallies broke out, organized by an authority demanding the Central Election Commission to register him as a deputy of parliament, by which he was elected in his Issyk-Kul district. Then the Prime Minister said at a meeting with Kyrgyz security officials about “the need to find the number one enemy of Kyrgyzstan and neutralize him.” Ryspek himself considered Kulov his blood enemy and more than once publicly threatened to take revenge on him for his brother, parliament member Tynychbek Akmatbaev, for whose death he considered him guilty.

The Prosecutor General of Kyrgyzstan, according to the AKIpress agency, informed the delegation from Balykchy about the progress of the investigation into the murders of Ryspek (the official version is still called a criminal showdown) and Tynychbek Akmatbayev. He assured that the cases of the brothers' deaths are under the control of his department.

Now Kyrgyz analysts are writing about the deceased Ryspek Akmatbaev as a person “with an eye on” whom “big politics were made in Kyrgyzstan, especially after the March coup” last year. Meanwhile, the figure of the 45-year-old authority is now acquiring national significance. Yesterday in parliament, two of his fellow deputies proposed to honor the memory of Ryspek Akmatbaev with a minute of silence. “Well, they killed Ryspek, who in his own way was also a patriot of his homeland,” Jyldyz Dzholdosheva, a member of the Kyrgyz Central Election Commission, said yesterday. “What’s surprising is that he had deep national pride and was seen off on his last journey not as a crime boss or thief in law, but as a deputy.” Ryspek's fellow countrymen are going to raise the issue with the authorities about renaming the city of Balykchy in his honor. It seems that in today's Kyrgyzstan the authorities will not soon become “purely non-authoritative”.

Arkady DUBNOV