CPJ goes to Uzbekistan

Even though the Uzbek constitution bans censorship, the State Committee on the Press serves as a de facto censorship body. The vice chair, Omon Matchan, told Zagalsky that the committee is concerned only with the protection of state secrets. There is, however, no list of such classified information, and, in practice, censors describe as secrets anything they do not want to see in print. Use of the words dictatorship, opposition, crisis and economic catastrophe are forbidden in the press, and Russian newspapers printed in Tashkent are censored in advance.

Uzbek authorities are also given to reading between the lines. An editor from the newspaper Molodezh Uzbekistan was questioned by the State Committee on the Press about whether he was making a veiled reference to Russia in an article about the weather that carried the headline “The Wind Is Blowing from the North.”

Independent papers exist in name only. They are primarily the publications of the official political parties and serve no opposition function. As Babakhan Sharipov, the main editor of The Uzbekistan Voice, told CPJ, “The main task of journalists in our republic is to help the State and president, to educate the people to work in peace and assure the great future of Uzbekistan.”