SECURITY services in Kyrgyzstan said today they have detained 15 “active members” of a coup plot involving lawmakers and former officials ahead of a parliamentary vote at the weekend.

The detained were part of a plan to get “1,000 aggressive young people” to protest the results of the vote, the state committee for national security said in a statement.

“After the announcement of the results of the upcoming parliamentary elections… this group planned to organise mass protests in (the capital) Bishkek and subsequently to aggravate the situation, provoking clashes with the forces of law and order and further violent seizure of power,” it said.

Security services “obtained irrefutable evidence of the criminal activity of a group of persons under the leadership of certain destructive political forces, including deputies of the (parliament) and former high-ranking officials”.

Without naming the detained, the committee also said it had “found and seized firearms, ammunition and drugs” in a raid on the alleged group’s office.

Kyrgyzstan, a poor, mountainous Central Asian country that has seen three presidents overthrown since its independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, hopes to avoid further instability as it holds its first parliamentary vote since unrest that brought the current leader, Sadyr Japarov, to power last year. 

Japarov’s critics have said that the head of state is repeating the mistakes of his predecessors by arresting potential rivals after overseeing constitutional changes that strengthened his position. 

Kyrgyzstan hosts a Russian military base and looks to next-door China for loans and investments. – AFP, November 26, 2021.