This is a translation of a Russian language news report on Kloop.kg written by Timur Rayimkulov.

The youth protest named “I don’t believe” was held on the 18th of December near the Central Election Committee building. It ended with all 20 participants being arrested by the police. Participants explained their protest as their will to “express distrust to the CEC’s work”.

The protest began at 13:00, participants initially planned to hold the action until 14:00. But the event lasted for around thirty minutes: all protesters were arrested by the police.

Mirsulzhan Namazaliev, co-chairman of the “Free Generation” youth liberal alliance, says that the “I don’t believe” action was organized by young people, “representatives of social organizations, students, and citizens”.

“We want to say here that we don’t believe the election results, because many of us were working as observers, and we witnessed gross violations: there was garbling, they falsified the results, - said Namazaliev during the protest. – We know how the people were beaten, how the government prevented all the parties from agitation and observation, except for the presidential one. We all got irritated”, - said Namazaliev.

Pre-term parliament elections were held in Kyrgyzstan two days before these protests. A number of organizations stated that the elections were held with massive violations of law. Particularly, OSCE Elections Observation Mission stated that “the way the results were calculated and summarized puts in doubt the transparency and accountability of the elections due to the facts of delays, presence of unauthorized persons, problems with the official reports, and intentional violations of procedures”.

“CEC is the governing body we don’t trust to, this body has proved several times that it cannot work properly”, - said Namazaliev.

Tolekan Ismailova, the director of “Citizens against corruption” organization, participated in the protest “to support the youth”, as she explained.

“I think it is their right to say that the elections results were falsified, and this action is being held in the form of peaceful protest, - Ismailova said during the protest. – But they are being frightened by the authorities”.

Lieutenant colonel Taalaybek Shatmanov, deputy chief of Pervomayskiy district police office, warned all the protesting participants and reminded them that “all the protests must be held in places specially designed for that”.

“Your actions violate the resolution of the city authorities, - said Shatmanov to the protesters, - I ask you to leave the place”. But the action participants said they would stay “till the end”.

Shatmanov referred to the resolution of Bishkek city administration that took effect on November 30, 2007. The resolution states that all the protests on the territory of Bishkek can be held only in fixed places determined by the government. They include the square in front of the Parliament building, the Gorky square, and the Youth park on the Western outskirts of Bishkek.

Human rights defenders disagreed with the city administration resolution’s legitimacy, they said that the Constitution of the Kyrgyz Republic prohibits any limits on peaceful protests.

Several minutes after warning the protesters, Taalaybek Shatmanov gave an order to the policemen to arrest the people. All 20 people were put inside the police car and delivered to the police office.

According to Mirsulzhan Namazaliev, protesters were kept in the police office till 18:20. The Pervomayskiy district court will hold a session on Friday, where judges will decide what kind of penalty must be applied to the protesters.