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.
Officials in Tajikistan are heaping new confusion onto the ongoing shutdown of Facebook. While users triumphantly explain to each other how to access the site through proxy servers, a group close to President Emomali Rakhmon has suggested that Tajikistan should build its own social network to promote “the ideals and national values of the Tajik people.”
The state agency in charge of IT and telecommunications has claimed the March 2-3 block – condemned by a Tajik Internet lobby and US-based Freedom House – is “temporary” and for “prophylactic maintenance.”
Internet service providers have said they were ordered to block Facebook last weekend, along with three or four news portals, by the state Communications Service, after one of the portals published an article severely criticizing Rakhmon and his government. When queried by news agency Asia-Plus, the head of the service, Beg Zukhurov, denied any order to block Facebook, but said the authors of offensive online content “defaming the honor and dignity of the Tajik authorities” should be made “answerable.” Tajikistan frequently uses libel cases and extremism charges to silence critical journalists.
Zukhurov promised to restore the Facebook connection “soon.” (Meanwhile, what seems to be a copy of his order is circulating on – you guessed it – Facebook.)
Authorities in Tajikistan have blocked access to Facebook and several Russian-language news websites, apparently trying to stem mounting online criticism of long-serving President Emomali Rakhmon. Since the uprisings across the Arab world in the past year, which authorities throughout Central Asia blame on social networks such as Facebook, the former Soviet region's autocrats have stepped up Internet restrictions, while citizens increasingly turn to social networks to discuss their frustrations.
The latest crackdown reportedly began after a website called Zvezda.ru published a withering critique of Rakhmon entitled “Tajikistan on the Eve of Revolution,” which argued the president is “incompetent” and presides over a corrupt regime where his family has gained control over every state asset down to the last telephone pole. The article predicts mass unrest. “Rakhmon’s regime has lead the country to complete devastation, ruin and terrible poverty,” wrote Sergey Strokan, a staffer with the heavyweight Russian daily Kommersant.
UPDATE: Unfortunately, after reading this blog, many readers from Kyrgyzstan have come to the conclusion that EurasiaNet is somehow supportive of Vladimir Farafonov. In fact, EurasiaNet has never endorsed any of Farafonov’s writing, which is, as our readers rightly point out, often offensive and provocative. In reporting on this case, we have documented the concerns of rights activists and pointed out the inconsistencies in Kyrgyzstan’s application of certain laws. Considering the weakness of the country’s legal system it is unsurprising, though unfortunate, that many Kyrgyzstanis have little patience for arguments in support of due process. On March 14, EurasiaNet published a story covering the Farafonov case in greater detail than in this original blog entry. --DT
Another journalist in Kyrgyzstan is facing what the Committee to Protect Journalists calls “politically motivated extremism charges.”
Vladimir Farafonov, an ethnic Russian from Kyrgyzstan, seems to have angered prosecutors and the state security services (the GKNB or KNB) by highlighting rising pro-Kyrgyz nationalism and lamenting the status of the ethnic Russian minority in the former Soviet republic. As we reported last week, such rules are selectively applied and have not targeted the Kyrgyz-language publications that have called on minority Uzbeks to leave and even tried to blame Kyrgyzstan's miniscule population of Jews for the country's suffering. The trial is scheduled to begin today.
Authorities in Bishkek have blocked the independent Russian-language news site Fergananews.com, eight months after a controversial parliament resolution saying the site should not be accessible to readers in Kyrgyzstan. It is unclear why the decision took so long to implement.
Kyrgyzstan’s legislature voted unanimously to block the Moscow-based website for perceived bias last June, around the one-year anniversary of interethnic bloodshed between Kyrgyz and Uzbek communities in the country’s south. The decision came at a time when many ethnic Kyrgyz felt unfairly demonized by the international community, while politicians parlayed the sentiment into nationalist chest thumping. According to the parliamentary resolution, Fergananews (previously Ferghana.ru), which covered the 2010 ethnic violence and its aftermath in exhaustive and critical detail, “ignites ethnic hatred.”
Press-freedom activists have condemned the move, with Reporters Without Borders calling it “absurd and outrageous.”
“Blocking a news website that is as professional and impartial as Fergana’s is a major step backwards for a country that aspires to be ‘Central Asia’s first parliamentary democracy,’” the Paris-based watchdog said in a statement on February 21.
According to Fergananews, Kyrgyz Telecom, Kyrgyzstan’s largest Internet service provider, blocked the site after a request from the State Agency for Communications earlier this month. Other ISPs have not yet followed, so the site is still available for some users.
