Soon it may be against the law in the Central Asian nation of Kyrgyzstan to film police doing their jobs. Kyrgyz MPs have embarked on a path to approve a law that would punish individuals who take photos or videos of law enforcement personnel carrying out official duties, such as traffic stops, and then post the images online.

MPs adopted a bill in its first reading on November 28 that would impose a fine of around $60, or mean up to seven days in jail, as regards individuals who post images of police acting in the line of duty, AKIPress reported. It has become an increasingly common practice for civilians to record encounters with law-enforcement officers to discourage shakedown attempts or other forms of harassment or abuse.

“Law enforcement officers, particularly in the southern part of the country, frequently employed arbitrary arrest, torture and the threat of criminal prosecution as a means of extorting cash payments from citizens,” according to the most recent US State Department country report on the state of rights in Kyrgyzstan.

One of the bill’s sponsors, Suyunbek Omurzakov, is cited by the Current Time news outlet as saying the practice of photographing or recording police actions damages the credibility of the Interior Ministry. One MP who voted against the bill, Dastan Bekeshev, alleged that police were already telling citizens that it was prohibited to film them, even though the bill has not gone through the entire approval process.

A video now circulating on social media in Kyrgyzstan shows a traffic police officer telling a motorist during a traffic stop that it is against the law to film him. “This is a bad precedent,” Current Time quotes Bekeshev as saying.

Rights activists in Bishkek describe the bill as a step toward the introduction of a police state. “The absurdity of this bill is simply outrageous,” activist Ertai Iskakov stated.

The US State Department country report says police abuse “reportedly remains a problem.” It goes on to note that individuals are most vulnerable to abuse when they are in police custody in pretrial detention facilities and jails. “Defense attorneys, journalists, and human rights monitoring organizations … reported incidents of torture by police and other law enforcement agencies [against detainees awaiting trial],” the report states.

This article first appeared on Eurasianet here.