Kyrgyzstan Bars Russian Human Rights Activist

Rights groups have accused President Kurmanbek Bakiyev of applying pressure ahead of the presidential elections.

Kyrgyzstan refused entry on Thursday to a Russian human rights activist, fuelling concern the government is tightening its grip ahead of elections next year.

A border guard spokeswoman said the Kyrgyz National Security Committee, successor to the Soviet-era KGB, had instructed border guards to refuse entry to Vitaly Ponomaryov, who works for Russian rights group Memorial.

"He arrived this morning and was sent back with the same flight," border guard spokeswoman Sazhira Chokoloyeva said. "He has been barred from entering Kyrgyzstan until 2014."

Rights groups have accused President Kurmanbek Bakiyev of applying pressure ahead of the presidential elections.

Ponomaryov said the ban followed his report on a protest in southern Kyrgyzstan last October. Kyrgyzstan jailed a group of suspected Islamists for staging the protest in which 150 people clashed with riot police.

"The entry ban followed the report... which mentions torture," he told Reuters by telephone from Moscow.

"The security authorities are afraid that their actions and their disrespect of human rights will come to light."

Kyrgyzstan, an impoverished Muslim nation, has been volatile since 2005, when mass riots triggered by a flawed parliamentary election forced former leader Askar Akayev to flee the country. Bakiyev came to power as a result of the 2005 events.

Last October, Kyrgyzstan barred a Norwegian human rights activist from entering the impoverished former Soviet republic