The UN Human Rights Committee held that the State of Kyrgyzstan violated a journalist’s right to freedom of expression, under Article 19 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), after ordering her to pay compensation for non-pecuniary damages and to remove an article from on an online news portal, for allegedly defaming former President Almazbek Atambaev. The petitioner, journalist Dina Maslova, faced a civil lawsuit, brought by the Prosecutor General of Kyrgyzstan, for publishing, on an internet news portal, an anonymous article criticizing Atambaev. The domestic courts of Kyrgyzstan granted the Prosecutor General’s claim and ordered Maslova to pay the sum of 38.000 euros in favor of Atambaev and to remove the article in question from the news site. The petitioner filed a communication before the UN Human Rights Committee arguing that the domestic courts’ rulings violated her right to freedom of expression, as the measures issued against her were unnecessary in a democratic society and disproportionate. The State, for its part, claimed that the restriction of the petitioner’s freedom of expression was compatible with Article 19 of the ICCPR and that the former President had waived his right to compensation—thus mitigating any chilling effect on expression. The UN Human Rights Committee found that the restrictions imposed on Maslova’s expression were neither necessary nor proportionate. The Committee stressed that in a democratic society, public figures—including heads of state—can be legitimately criticized and that national courts failed to properly assess the content of the article or the context of its publication. Furthermore, the Committee rejected the State’s argument that the former President had waived his right to compensation, concluding that the domestic judgments had a chilling effect on the petitioner’s right to freedom of expression in her role as a journalist.