Biography of Ambassador Zamira Sydykova
Born in 1960 in Bishkek, the capital of Kyrgyzstan, Zamira Sydykova graduated from the journalism faculty of Moscow State University and began work as a reporter for the popular youth newspaper, Komsomolets Kirgizii. In early 1992, immediately after Kyrgyzstan separated from the former Soviet Union, Ms. Sydykova founded her country’s first independent newspaper, Res Publica.
As editor-in-chief at Res Publica, she led the struggle for a free press and an open society in Kyrgyzstan. Her unrelenting criticism of corruption and authoritarian tendencies in the country’s ruling elite resulted in her imprisonment and in repeated attempts to close her newspaper. For her valor in resisting the intimidation of the authorities and in championing the rights of the individual in Central Asia, she was awarded the Courage in Journalism Award by the Washington, DC-based International Women’s Media Foundation in 2000.
Before assuming her ambassadorial post, Ms. Sydykova had traveled on numerous occasions to North America as a representative of the democratic aspirations of the people of Kyrgyzstan. In that role, she lectured at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and gave testimony to the U.S. Helsinki Commission and to the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States. In the wake of the democratic uprising in Kyrgyzstan in March, 2005, Ms. Sydykova was appointed Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary to the USA and Canada.
