A prominent Kyrgyz opposition journalist died in hospital on Tuesday, nearly a week after he was thrown out of a tall building in Kazakhstan with his hands tied behind his back, police said. Gennady Pavlyuk had been in a coma since the attack on December 16. Police said they were treating his death as murder.
Kyrgyzstan's opposition has condemned the attack on Pavlyuk, a staunch critic of the Kyrgyz government, saying it was an attempt by President Kurmanbek Bakiyev to silent dissent in the impoverished former Soviet republic. "The authorities ... were afraid of Pavlyuk," said Kyrgyz opposition leader Omurbek Tekebayev.
Pavlyuk had been preparing to open a new opposition newspaper next month in the mountainous mainly Muslim nation. The Committee to Protect Journalists said this month the 2009 tally of 68 deaths was up from 42 in 2008 and surpassed the previous record of 67 deaths in 2007.