Ruslan Kazakbaev, Minister of Foreign Affairs of Kyrgyzstan, assured Russian Ambassador Nikolay Udovichenko that there was no russophobia in the republic and the authorities promptly responded to displays of domestic nationalism, such as the attack on a shop assistant in Bishkek for speaking to a customer in Russian. This was said in the statement posted on the website of the Foreign Ministry.
The Minister and the Ambassador discussed at the meeting the incident with a citizen of Kyrgyzstan and an employee of the Tekhno Park shopping centre in Bishkek, who is Russian and also has a citizenship of the republic. ‘The Head of the Foreign Ministry of the Republic of Kyrgyzstan informed that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Kyrgyzstan closely monitored and promptly responded to all incidents of such kind’, the statement says.
Kazakbaev stressed that Kyrgyzstan was a multinational state and according to its Constitution ‘nobody can be discriminated against on the basis of gender, race, language, ethnicity, religion, age and political or other beliefs’. As the Minister assured, there is no russophobia and other forms of aggressive nationalism, no rewriting of history, no fighting against monuments and the Russian language’ in the republic. This language is represented in all the spheres of life in Kyrgyzstan, whose authorities will continue the course to protect the status of the Russian language so that the Russian-speaking population can fully satisfy its spiritual and social needs, Kazakbaev added.
‘In this vein, it is noted that isolated cases of domestic nationalism should not be presented by the Russian authorities as systematic violations of the rights and interests of ethnic Russians in Kyrgyzstan and as oppression of citizens on ethnic and religious grounds’, the statement of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs says. Kazakbaev asked the Russian Diplomatic Mission ‘to draw attention of some Russian politicians to the inadmissibility of harsh statements on such problems and bringing them into public space’. ‘The parties stressed the need to make joint efforts in a constructive manner to prevent further escalation of the problem and to avoid negative consequences in the Kyrgyzstan-Russian relations, which have a privileged character in the spirit of alliance and strategic partnership’, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic concluded.
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Photo: Russian Foreign Ministry
Based on materials from TASS