Inga Sikorskaia

Affiliated media: School of Peacemaking and Media Technology, Director, Journalist, Media expert

Incident date: June 16, 2018

Attack type:

• Damage to / seizure of property, vehicles, equipment, documents, journalistic materials, print media circulation

Who attacked: Authorities

Source: Kaktus.media

Location: Kyrgyzstan

Additional information:

"You are ordered to inform!" - this is how the border guard reacted aloud, studying my data in the electronic system after I showed him my passport during passport control at the Manas airport on 16th June 2018. My passport was then taken somewhere without explanation. No-one answered my questions about what was happening. When my passport was returned to me half an hour later and I went back to passport control, the story repeated itself. The border guard said that my document should be checked again. In fact, I passed the border control procedure twice. The document was returned to me only after I started calling a journalist colleague, who contacted the border service. I went through passport control just as I boarding for my flight was about to finish. Moreover, after this intense verification, the photo on my passport was damaged - torn off by a third. But I found out later: I didn't check all the pages of the document before I got on the plane. Upon arrival in Almaty, the Kazakh border guard pointed out this defect to me and agreed to let me pass only after presenting an internal Kyrgyz passport. (This is an excerpt from the publication linked on the right.)