March 23-29, 2015

1. Society

Kabar.kg, Privately-owned media, Accessed on March 25, 2015
A. Mamataliev: Local authorities perceive growing threat of extremism

• Deputy Prime Minister of Kyrgyzstan Abdyrakhman Mamataliev noted a rise in extremism at a meeting of law enforcement agencies from the Talas region of Northwest Kyrgyzstan.
• In the presentation he gave Mamataliev indicated that there was insufficient response by authorities to the growing religious extremism in the region.
• The issue of combatting rising extremism was coupled with combatting drug trafficking. 

2. Politics

24.kg, State-owned media, Accessed on March 23, 2015
“Those who want to abolish the official status of the Russian language are criminals.”

• The quotation was taken from a statement made by the Head of the Department of International Journalism Kyrgyz Russian Slavic University.
• The head of the National Commission on State Language, Egemberdi Ermatov, told reporters that that state was considering, based on proposals made by a group of researchers, to abolish the constitutional state of the Russian language as one of Kyrgyzstan’s official language.
• The state is already imposing the rule that government workers must pass a fluency test in Kyrgyzstan.
• One of the reasons given for demotion of Russian, is that certain groups see Russian as only useful in Bishkek, but no where else in Kyrgyzstan.