Postcard from Bishkek

I don’t often spend time pouring over laws and regulations, but a recent article in the newspaper Slovo Kyrgyzstan, (an official, Government newspaper), sent me scurrying to the Toktom legal database … The law in particular was the Criminal Code of the Kyrgyz Soviet Socialist Republic, (Kyrgyz SSR).

It was passed in 1960 – Toktom doesn’t seem to have a copy of the previous law – but lost force when a new Criminal Code was introduced in 1997 repealing the former one.  So … why was I looking up an old law that is no longer in force?

I had been doing some research for another postcard, about Sultan Ibraimov, the former Chief Minister of the Kyrgyz SSR who was shot, (assassinated) in December 1980, and I came across the article Deadly secrets of the Soviet era: the death of the first persons in Kyrgyzstan. (For the record:- it’s in Russian).

The article started with a reference to the provisions of the Criminal Code … which contained ten articles defining “Especially Dangerous Acts of High Treason” … and hence my interest in finding the law.  It went on to cite a number of occasions when these particular provisions were breached … with the suggestion that it was, apparently, with the connivance  of the authorities … and remember, this is a government newspaper.

Although the headline was “Deadly secrets of the Soviet era”, the author went on to cite two cases from the 1990’s – when Kyrgyzstan was already Independent – and also considered some cases which went beyond “the death of the first persons in Kyrgyzstan”.

 

The first case that was cited was a brief account of Ibraimov’s murder, together with his driver/bodyguard, in a supposedly closely guarded resort on the shores of Lake Issyk Kul.  According to the KGB, both of them were shot by one of the locals – Smaguine – who had somehow, quietly penetrated the house.  For some reason, that night in the cottage had no police protection, and there no workers there either.

After a few months, Smaguine was discovered near the Russian city of Kuibyshev … hung up by a scarf in a police cell.  The authorities maintained that he was insane and committed the “motiveless” double murder in a delirious state.  However, not everyone accepted that particular version.

The murder attracted the attention of the Western press, (for example, it merited a headline in the New York Times, even if many of their readers had no idea of where Kyrgyzstan was).  More interestingly, the Morning Star, (the newspaper of the British Communist Party), openly wrote that it was a political murder .

 

The article then went on to say that this may not have been an isolated case … referring to the circumstances surrounding the deaths of:

• Matyev, the First Secretary if the Osh City Party,
• Kazakbaev and Nurataliev, functionaries of the Central Committee of the Communist Party,
• Begmatov, Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers,
• Cheksov, the prosecutor in Osh,
• Kirov, a lawyer in Kara Buura, in Talas,
• and several unnamed others …

which, the author said, remain unsolved.

 

He went on to consider two specific cases that have occurred since Independence.

The first was the death of the first Prime Minister of Independent Kyrgyzstan, Nasirdinov Isanov in November 1991, when his a car was involved in an accident on the road between Djalal Abad and Osh.  A ZIL swerved into the path of the Isanov’s government Volga.  The driver of the ZIL got off lightly, the driver of the Volga suffered a broken arm and bruised chest and another person, (a businessman – who appears to have had a somewhat mixed reputation), was only scratched … Isanov, however, (at least, according to the official account), died within minutes after the collision.

Incidentally, the article went on to draw connections between the businessman, the original Kumtor mine, the administration of Askar Akaev, a planeload of twenty three million dollars worth of gold, and it said that he is now wanted by the authorities in several countries for fraud, manipulation and communication with the Mafia. It also said that it is possible that he is working “on some secret service”.

The second concerned the death of Anarbek Bakaev, a General and Chief of the Intelligence Service, who died as the result of a car accident approaching Manas airport in October 1996 … although he remained in a coma until his death in January 1998.

 

It was an interesting article, (if somewhat quixotic), but it did occur to me to wonder if this was not an a somewhat selective list … as there have been several other cases where people have been murdered, (politicians, reporters and even members of  and there has been the suggestion of the involvement of the authorities.

 

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For the record: Those ten articles of the Criminal that were referred to in the newspaper article that defined ”Especially Dangerous Acts of High Treason” included:

• Change to the Homeland, Treason, which it defined as actions of a Soviet citizen to the detriment of the sovereignty, the territorial inviolability or the state security and defensibility of the USSR, (including: joining the ranks of an enemy, or their agents; espionage, delivery of the state or military secret; flight abroad or refusal to come return from abroad;  rendering aid to a foreign state in carrying out hostile activity against the USSR, and equally plotting for the purpose of capture of power);
• Espionage, which it defined as the transfer of the data classified as a state or military secret to a foreign state, organisation or their agent , (including the collecting of information for the purpose of such transfer), or collecting such information on the instructions of a foreign secret service of other data for their use to the detriment of interests of the USSR;
• Acts of Terrorism, which it defined as the murder of a a state or public figure or a representative of the power, made in connection with its state or public work, for the purpose of subversion or weakening of Soviet power;
• Acts of terrorism against the representative a foreign state, which it defined as murder or injury of a representative of a foreign state for the purpose of provocation of war or international “complications”;
• Subversion, which it defined as acts committed for the purpose of weakening the Soviet state such as explosions, arson or other actions directed on mass destruction of people, causing physical injuries or other harm to their health, destruction or damage of enterprises, constructions, roads, communication facilities or other state or public property, mass poisonings or distribution of epidemics or epizootics;
• Sabotage, which it defined as actions, (or inaction), directed as damaging industry, transport, agriculture, the monetary system, tradem or other branches of the economy, state bodies or public organizations with the aim of weakening the Soviet state;
• Appeals for the violent overthrow, or change of, the Soviet state and social order or, or to the violent infringement of unity of territory, the Soviet Union and the Kirghiz Soviet Socialist Republic, which it defined as public appeals and also the distribution of materials for such a purpose, whether by individuals or organizations or their representatives;
• Appeals to fulfilment of crimes against the state, which was defined as public appeals for the above actions
• The Propogation of War, which it defined as activity directed to preparation or fulfilment of especially dangerous high treason or to the creation of an organisation with the aim of committing such crimes, and participation in an anti-Soviet organisation;
• Especially dangerous acts of high treason made against other workers’ states, which, oddly enough, wasn’t further defined.

The 1997 law is organized slightly differently … and, of course, there are no references to Soviet power, but there are articles about:

• Terrorism (albeit in a separate section);
• High Treason;
• Espionage;
• Endangering the life of the state or public figures;
• Violent capture of power;
• Armed rebellion;
• Public appeals to violent change of the constitutional order;
• Subversion;
• Excitation to national, racial or religious hatred;
• Disclosure of state secrets;
• Loss of documents containing a state secret;
• Transfer or collection of information containing state secrets for the purpose of transfer, to a foreign organization;

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I described the newspaper article as “somewhat quixotic”.  Part of the reason for that is that it also included the following fascinating point:

In the twenty years between 1960 and 1980, Kyrgyzstan played host to a lot of people from what the author called “unstable countries” in Asia, Africa and Latin America – who were ostensibly here as “students”.  After returning home, most of them took an active part in the armed struggle on the side of various national liberation, separatist, reform, religious, military, patriotic, far-right, left-wing and (to quote the report) “simply terrorist organizations”.

These apparently included members the Middle Eastern groups “Hezbollah” and HAMAS, “Sakir International” ( I have no idea who they were), the Fatah Revolutionary Council, the Palestinian Intifada movement, “Black September”, “Armed Groups-17″, the Colombian “death squads”, “Shining Path”, “Tupac Amaru”, the Khmer Rouge, the Sandinista Front, UNITA, the Eritrean army, LTTE – Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (…  who, as the article puts it, were “nurtured by Soviet military machine and then fought against it in Afghanistan”), Laos, Egypt, El Salvador, Lebanon, Burma, Iraq, Chile, Sudan, Angola, and from many other parts of the world.

 

 

Tags: History, Soviet_Union