Bektour Iskender, Lessons from Kyrgyzstan’s Civil Society

Bektour Iskender is a journalist, educator, and co-founder of Kloop Media, one of Kyrgyzstan’s largest media outlets that doubles as a journalism school to equip youth in the country with the skills to investigate and report on corruption. Recorded at the 2022 Oslo Freedom Forum, in this episode, Iskender tells of his live-blogging of the 2010 Kyrgyz Revolution, which culminated in the ousting of Kyrgyzstan’s corrupt administration. Despite death threats from the national security services, Iskender is still using machine learning to uncover corruption, and working to launch Kyrgyzstan’s first satellite into space with a team of all-female engineers.