Two independent journalists have been detained in Uzbekistan’s capital for taking photos of a local market.
Reporters Without Borders writes that police stopped the two journalists, Pavel Kravets and Sid Yanyshev, around 1700 on July 30 at Askia Market in Tashkent. While the two say they were taking photos of the market for stories about Uzbekistan’s upcoming Independence Day, the police accused the two of “pursuing a strategic goal.”
According to an emailed statement from the Tashkent-based Human Rights Aliance, the police released the two men that evening after destroying their materials and instructing them to return to the local police station the following day with their passports.
Throughout Central Asia, photographers will often find themselves harassed by authorities (and/or local thugs) for snapping just about anything, from colorful markets and city scenes to so-called strategic objects, like government buildings and railroad stations. ("The whole world can see this on Google Earth," isn't generally an effective defense.)
But Uzbekistan, where pictures of anything aside from smiling children and monumental architecture are generally frowned upon by the government, takes the paranoia to a new level. In 2010, celebrated Uzbek photographer Umida Akhmedova was found guilty of “slander” by an Uzbek court for her images documenting the difficulties of rural life and the life of women. Under intense international pressure, the court amnestied her before she served any time in prison. (See some of her photos here.)
It’s rare the West has anything nice to say about the state of press freedom in Tajikistan. But this week, Dushanbe got some deserved praise.
On May 31, the lower house of parliament unanimously approved the president’s March proposal to remove libel and insult from the criminal code, and make them administrative offenses carrying fines but no jail time. The senate and the president must still approve the change.
“I welcome President Emomali Rakhmon’s initiative and the Parliament’s subsequent steps to decriminalize defamation. Once implemented, they will help safeguard freedom of expression and freedom of the media in Tajikistan,” said the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe’s representative on freedom of the media, Dunja Mijatović.
Tajik prosecutors regularly use libel charges to silence critical journalists, selectively interpreting legal provisions as necessary, says Freedom House. “Independent journalism has been marginalized” under Rakhmon, the watchdog wrote in its latest report on press freedom in Tajikistan. Moreover, “journalists who criticize authorities or expose government corruption continue to report threats and intimidation.” Last month, a television presenter in Dushanbe was attacked and hospitalized shortly after announcing a new project to report on cronyism and corruption.
It’s never a good time to be a government critic in Tajikistan, but this week has been particularly bad. Two critics have been violently attacked in separate incidents.
A leader of the minority Uzbek community in Khatlon Province, Salim Shamsiddinov, 57, was beaten with a metal pipe in broad daylight on May 5 near his home in Qurghon-Teppa.
Shamsiddinov told Radio Ozodi (Radio Liberty’s Tajik service) that he believes the attack, carried out by three athletic-looking men, was related to a recent interview he gave the newspaper “Millat,” where he criticized Tajik authorities for their “nationalist” position in dealing with rival Uzbekistan. (That statement so upset his allies that the day Shamsiddinov was attacked he was also dismissed from his post as deputy chairman of the Society of Uzbeks in Tajikistan.) He has also regularly criticized Tashkent's approach to relations with Tajikistan. Uzbeks make up roughly 15 percent of Tajikistan’s population.
Separately, on May 7 in Dushanbe, television presenter Daler Sharipov was hospitalized in an attack by unknown assailants. Asia-Plus reports a suspect has been detained, but Sharipov’s friend, who witnessed the attack, says he is not certain the suspect is the assailant.
More bad news for journalists in Central Asia: An international ranking by Washington-based watchdog Freedom House has shown the region's five former Soviet states performing dismally when it comes to protecting press freedom. All five fall into Freedom of the Press 2012’s "Not Free" category.
Two, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan, are singled out (not for the first time) as among the world’s worst abusers of press freedoms. These two authoritarian states languish at the bottom of Freedom House’s ranking of 197 countries: Reclusive Turkmenistan stands at 196 (beaten to last place by North Korea); Uzbekistan hovers at 195.
In these two countries “independent media are either nonexistent or barely able to operate, the press acts as a mouthpiece for the regime, citizens’ access to unbiased information is severely limited, and dissent is crushed through imprisonment, torture, and other forms of repression,” the report says.
The media situation in Kazakhstan, which has a handful of independent domestic outlets and allows foreign journalists to work, is somewhat less restricted. Nevertheless, Freedom House singles it out as among “countries of special concern,” alongside Russia and Azerbaijan. Kazakhstan ranked 175th, tying with Ethiopia and The Gambia.
As the trial of 37 people accused of crimes related to fatal unrest in Zhanaozen last December continues in western Kazakhstan, prosecutors have singled out foreign journalists in their indictment of suspected ringleaders.
The Associated Press reported on April 27 that one of its correspondents was among reporters named in the charge sheet, which also named correspondents from the BBC and Kazakh newspaper Respublika, and a researcher from New York-based Human Rights Watch.
The indictment included transcripts of their December 16 conversations with Roza Tuletayeva, who faces up to 10 years in jail on charges of organizing mass unrest that day. It said she reported by telephone during the violence “to domestic and foreign correspondents,” described in the indictment as “miscreants.” In the transcripts, the reporters ask Tuletayeva what is happening and she describes events.
Tuletayeva is a former staff member from the OzenMunayGaz energy company who was involved in a strike that descended into violence last December. At least 16 people died when police fired on protestors.
Tuletayeva and others on trial have told the court that testimony was extracted from them by torture.
The indictment alleges that Tuletayeva was among ringleaders who organized premeditated unrest. It published transcripts of her SMS messages and calls, suggesting that her telephone was tapped before the unrest erupted.
A journalist is recovering in a West Kazakhstan Region hospital following a vicious attack in which he was knifed eight times and shot with an air gun, local newspaper Uralskaya Nedelya reports.
Lukpan Akhmedyarov, a journalist from Uralskaya Nedelya who is well-known for his hard-hitting reporting, was attacked by five young men near his home in the regional capital of Oral (known in Russian as Uralsk) late on April 19, according to eyewitness reports.
He was hit over the back of the head with a heavy object then stabbed eight times, leaving him with deep knife wounds to the jaw, abdomen and chest. The newspaper published a photo of him covered in blood on a stretcher, and quoted a surgeon as saying Akhmedyarov’s body had traces of air gun wounds.
Doctors operated and said on April 20 that the journalist’s life was not in danger.
Uralskaya Nedelya editor-in-chief Tamara Yeslyamova said she believed the attack was the result of the reporter’s work. She quoted Akhmedyarov as saying the day before the assault that his wife was under pressure at her work over his reporting. In turn, Yeslyamova said, Akhmedyarov’s wife’s managers were being pressured by the security services.
The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists condemned the attack, though it pointed out that it is not yet clear if there is a link to Akhmedyarov’s reporting.
Yelena Bondar, one of the few independent journalists operating inside Uzbekistan, is defiant after a Tashkent court ruled earlier this month that she must pay $3,700 in fines for researching the closure of a Russian university campus there.
The court decided that Bondar's research had insulted the nation, as photographer Umida Ahmedova had in 2010 by documenting gender inequality. “Bondar’s defense lawyer says no actual evidence was brought to demonstrate her guilt. Journalists and human rights defenders were not allowed to attend the hearing,” reports the Institute for War and Peace Reporting. From IWPR’s interview with Bondar:
IWPR: This isn’t the first case where lawyers and human rights defenders say charges have not been supported by evidence in court. In March, Viktor Krymzalov was fined for an article he never wrote, while last autumn, Leonid Kudryavtsev, the press officer at the British Embassy, was fined for conducting “illegal training.”
Why is this happening now?
Yelena Bondar: In the cases you’ve cited, trials are not intended to provide fair hearings; they are a pretext for punishing journalists and those who support them. The guilty verdict and the charges are invented.
The authorities are using every means possible to maintain authoritarian rule, so they wage war on dissent and freedom of speech.
IWPR: What measures can journalists who are charged in Uzbekistan take to prove their innocence?
In an unexpected move, a Turkish judge today released pending trial Nedim Sener and Ahmet Sik, two high-profile journalists who had been detained for over a year on charges that they were part of a plot to topple the government.
The arrest and jailing of the two respected journalists had brought Turkey's record on press freedom under increasing scrutiny. For example, Sener and Sik's surprise release -- along with two other journalists who were in jail -- came only days after the New Yorker took a look at the subject of media freedom (or the lack of it) in Turkey, first in a long article and then in a followup blog post by the story's author, Dexter Filkins. In his post, which notes that Turkey has the highest number of journalists jailed in the world, Filkins writes: "Measuring strictly in terms of imprisonments, Turkey—a longtime American ally, member of NATO, and showcase Muslim democracy—appears to be the most repressive country in the world." Clearly, this is not the way Ankara would like the world to think of Turkey. For the government of the Justice and Development Party (AKP), which has worked hard to present itself as a force for reform and democratization, the release of Sener and Sik appears to be an important step in rescuing its image.
March 12 is World Day Against Cyber-Censorship. To mark the day, the watchdog organization Reporters Without Borders published its “Enemies of the Internet” list. Not surprisingly, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan ranked among the worst of the worst.
Reporters Without Borders characterized Turkmenistan as among “the countries most hostile to freedom of expression.” It also said Asghabat is “imposing drastic censorship,” adding that only 2.2 percent of the population enjoys regular access to the Internet. On the bright side, the report noted that the Abadan tragedy last July offered an instance in which citizen journalists were able to circumvent government controls, at least temporarily, and transmit information about the event to the outside world.
“After initially covering up this [Abadan] incident, the authorities were eventually obliged to acknowledge it, though they tried to minimize it. But they quickly reacted by launching a wave of seizures, interrogations and incarcerations, though how many is still unknown,” the report states.
Commenting on Uzbekistan, Reporters Without Borders said officials in Tashkent, along with leaders in other authoritarian-minded states, stepped up their oversight of the Internet in response to the Arab Spring of early 2011.
“The [Uzbek] authorities are increasingly cracking down on technical intermediaries, ”the report said. “ISPs and mobile phone operators are now required to report mass mailings of “suspicious content,” and to disconnect their networks at the authorities’ simple request. The objective is clear: to prevent any mass distributions and rallies.”
Authorities in Tajikistan appear to have lifted their weeklong ban on the social networking site Facebook.
Users in Dushanbe say they have been able to access the site again on March 10. The Asia-Plus news agency reports that the government Communications Service verbally told Internet service providers (ISPs) they could restore access to the site late on March 9. Several news websites remain inaccessible.
Earlier in the week, Asia-Plus published a letter from the head of the Communications Service, Beg Zukhurov, ordering the blockage. Zukhurov denied the site was blocked, saying it was down for “prophylactic maintenance” and that access would be restored. But few believed him because he used the occasion to lash out at journalists who defame “the honor and dignity of the Tajik authorities,” and said authors of such content should be made “answerable.”
The kerfuffle over Facebook began late on March 2 when, apparently reacting to an article severely criticizing Tajikistan’s long-serving president, Emomali Rakhmon, authorities blocked the site where it originally appeared, Zvezda.ru, and three others, along with Facebook. The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe criticized the “worrying development” and urged Dushanbe to restore access to the sites. “Despite occasional blocking of certain websites in Tajikistan, Internet has remained largely free,” the OSCE representative on freedom of the media, Dunja Mijatović, said.
