Sadyr Japarov

December 6, 1968

Kyrgyz nationalist politician freed from prison in the 2020 protests, who became Prime Minister and then President of Kyrgyzstan.

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Biography

Sadyr Japarov is a Kyrgyz politician who has been president of Kyrgyzstan since January 2021. He came from the Issyk-Kul region, trained in physical education, and ran businesses before entering politics. He studied law at the Kyrgyz-Russian Slavic University, graduating in 2006.

Japarov was elected to parliament in 2005 and became an adviser to President Kurmanbek Bakiyev, heading an anti-corruption agency from 2008. After Bakiyev's fall in 2010 he joined the nationalist Ata-Zhurt party and led a campaign to nationalise the Kumtor gold mine. After a 2013 protest over the mine in which a regional governor was briefly held hostage, he was accused of organising it and fled the country; on his return in 2017 he was sentenced to eleven years in prison.

During the unrest after the disputed parliamentary election of October 2020 supporters freed him from prison. Parliament named him prime minister, and within days he also became acting president. He resigned to run in the January 2021 presidential election, which he won by a wide margin, and the same day voters backed a return to a presidential system. A new constitution expanding presidential powers was approved in an April 2021 referendum.