Donate Now
Philip Shishkin, for the Pulitzer Center
Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan
A makeshift memorial to Gennady Pavlyuk in his apartment
Of all the intrigues in the political life of Kyrgyzstan, few can rival the mystery of Gennady Pavlyuk, a local journalist with a sharp pen.
Mr. Pavlyuk spared no effort to criticize the government of Kurmanbek Bakiyev, who was overthrown in a violent revolt earlier this month. Mr. Bakiyev came to power in 2005, riding a wave of popular optimism that followed the ouster of his predecessor. But the corruption, nepotism and misrule that characterized the previous regime quickly infected the new one too.
Opposition leaders began to complain about the alleged excesses of the new rulers. Mr. Pavlyuk became an eloquent and fearless chronicler of those complaints. They included the rapid rise of Mr. Bakiyev's young son Maxim to the pinnacle of Kyrgyzstan's business and power in what appeared to be a deliberate plan to groom him for succession.
On Nov. 30, Mr. Pavlyuk, under his usual penname Ibrahim Rustambek, wrote an article for a popular news website. The article, headlined "Max Bakiyev as a tough macho of Kyrgyz politics", took a look at the younger Bakiyev's rising profile. On Nov. 15, Mr. Pavlyuk published a long interview with Omurbek Tekebayev, a prominent opposition leader who was paying Mr. Pavlyuk's salary. He was quoted as saying "the Bakiyev regime is in agony, it is politically, historically and morally doomed." The rest of the 2,000-word article continued in that spirit.
At the time, Mr. Pavlyuk was trying to raise money for a media company he wanted to start. He had big plans for a magazine, a newspaper and a website, but couldn't find backers. The media landscape is abysmal everywhere, but even more so in Kyrgyzstan where political pressure silenced many journalists. "Everyone he saw turned down his proposal," says his wife Olga Kolosova.
Then one day, Mr. Pavlyuk got an intriguing email from an outfit with a strangely long name: the Foundation for the Development of International Relations between the Countries of the Commonwealth of Independent States and the European Community. The email said that the foundation's board of directors decided to award an 80,000 euro grant "aimed at the support of independent print publications in Kyrgyzstan." The email's author, a woman named Marina, informed Mr. Pavlyuk that his colleagues recommended him as a candidate for the grant.
"When he came home he was so happy, he said 'finally…," Ms. Kolosova recalls. Yet, the joy was quickly tinged with suspicions. Mr. Pavlyuk and his wife couldn't find any trace of this foundation on the Internet. "We scoured so many websites," she says. Mr. Pavlyuk wrote back to the mysterious Marina. "Could you please tell me what your foundation's website is, its phone numbers, addresses. I'd like to learn a bit more about the foundation's work, about the project, etc." Instead, Marina wrote back to say that the pool of candidates for the grant was shrinking, from the initial 200 to about three or five people. Mr. Pavlyuk, she told him, was still in the running. He was invited for an interview in Almaty, Kazakhstan.
The seasoned journalist kept trying to pin her down on the details about the foundation. "Dear Marina, yesterday I got a phone call from a young man who introduced himself as Abay, and we discussed my possible trip on Dec. 16. But the line suddenly went dead so he didn't give me any information about the location of the office, the phone number etc. And I asked you, if you recall, to give me the foundation's website. For now, I view our correspondence (my apologies) as a friendly practical joke." And here Mr. Pavlyuk's used a Russian expression for a wild-goose chase. "Where I am supposed to go to look for an old man in the village?"
Ms. Kolosova recalls her husband was told to just come to Almaty where he would learn everything he needed to know about the foundation. A room in his name was already booked in Hotel Kazakhstan, an Almaty high rise. "This is strange, nobody knows anything about this foundation, I wonder if I might be getting myself into a scam" Mr. Pavlyuk said one day in their tiny kitchen, his wife recalled. Mr. Pavlyuk called the Almaty hotel, and there was a fully paid reservation in his name for one night. "Some of our doubts were dispelled, and he decided to go," Ms. Kolosova said. On Dec. 16, he kissed his wife goodbye and took a cab to Almaty.
On Dec. 17, Ms. Kolosova got a phone call telling her that a man, who might be her husband, had fallen out of a sixth-floor window of a residential building in Almaty. It's a dreary Soviet-era apartment block, and the man landed on the concrete canopy over the entrance. Ms. Kolosova rushed to Almaty, hoping it wasn't Mr. Pavlyuk. But it was him — he was in a deep coma. He clung to life for five days, and died on Dec. 22. In Kyrgyzstan, his death was seen as the last nail in the coffin of the freedom of the press. Leaked details of the Kazakh investigation strongly suggested that Mr. Pavlyuk had been thrown out of that window. What's more, calls to and from his mobile phone connected his death to people in Bishkek. These people were linked to Kyrgyzstan's State Security Service, Ms. Kolosova says she was told by investigators.
Since then, no public headway has been made in the investigation. Ms. Kolosova hopes that the new government in Bishkek will help bring those responsible to justice. For now, she's preoccupied with another concern: trying to find money to build a proper tombstone over Mr. Pavlyuk's grave.