First authorities shut her television and radio stations in Uzbekistan’s capital, Tashkent. Then they went after her network of stations around the country. Now Gulnara Karimova, the beleaguered elder daughter of Uzbekistan’s president, says someone is trying to force her into exile.
Radio Ozodlik (Radio Liberty’s Uzbek Service) reported this week that the broadcasting licenses of five non-governmental television network-operated channels (NTT) in Kashkadarya, Fergana and Bukhara regions and Karakalpakstan were suspended on November 1. An executive from one of the affected stations told Ozodlik that 80 percent of Uzbekistan’s non-state-run television stations are now off air.
Karimova is believed to have controlled these channels through Firdavs Abdukhalikov, her former spokesman. Abdukhalikov's whereabouts are unknown. He was last seen at the opening of Karimova's annual Style.uz arts festival on October 22, Ozodlik said. A new suspiciously detailed report by a name that few believe belongs to a real person – possibly a pseudonym used by the security services, acting alone or in collaboration with exiled opposition leader Muhammad Solih – says he is being held by the secret police.
The latest twist in the mounting media scandal comes on top of money-laundering and bribery inquiries into Karimova's associates in Switzerland and Sweden. As those investigations nudged closer to Karimova this summer, she suddenly left her position as Uzbekistan’s ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva, losing her diplomatic immunity – and possibly a comfortable exile in Europe.
Over the past several weeks, Karimova has launched a fusillade of attacks on senior members of her father’s government, whom she has accused of trying to kill her and seize power. Several of her businesses, including the media empire, are reportedly facing scrutiny from taxmen, prosecutors and police.
On November 13 Karimova wrote on Twitter that someone is pushing her to flee the country. The same day, she said the owner of a chain of record stores she is believed to control had been arrested.
Could the glamorous first daughter, long mooted as a future president, be forced, like so many businessmen and critics before her, to flee the tyrannical system she once helped control?
Sign up for Eurasianet's free weekly newsletter. Support Eurasianet: Help keep our journalism open to all, and influenced by none.