Feb 10 2010
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“ Kubanychbek Isabekov, a legislator with the governing Ak Jol Party, told parliament on February 3 that the exhibit by Russian-American photographer Sergei Melnikoff, entitled “The Land of the Kyrgyz,” must not be shown in Kyrgyzstan because Melnikoff, who emigrated to the United States in the late 1980s, has been critical of human rights abuses in Russia, a patron state of Kyrgyzstan’s. “Russia is our major strategic partner. How can we allow such a person to hold his exhibits here in this country?” local media outlets quoted Isabekov as saying. After the parliamentary session, Kyrgyz President Kurmanbek Bakiyev fired the director of the State Culture Agency, Sultan Raev, for allowing the exhibition.
