The mudslinging against the favorite in Kyrgyzstan’s upcoming presidential elections on October 30, Almazbek Atambayev, shows little sign of abating.
Kyrgyz-language newspaper Uchur reheated allegations on October 13 that Atambayev is profiting from the illegal drug trade, but not without adding some piquant and typically (for Kyrgyz-language newspapers) outrageous and unsourced allegations.
According to the Uchur report, the Russia media has turned on Atambayev and exposed his alleged involvement in the drug trade. It is not clear to which Russian publications Uchur is referring and there is little evidence of any truth in their claim. So far, it seems the slurs have only gained traction on a handful on dubious local news websites and Internet forums. (In fact, on October 10 Atambayev was received in Moscow by Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, which looks suspiciously like an endorsement.)
The campaign appears to be the brainchild of a group that calls itself the Association of Free Bloggers and Journalists of Kyrgyzstan, which no prominent blogger in the country has confessed to ever having heard of. The only figure identified as having any association with the group is one Bakit Djailibaev, who spends most of his time on Facebook taunting actual bloggers and posting links in favor of rival presidential candidate Tursunbai Bakir uulu, a conservative from the Ar-Namys party.
As long prison terms were handed down in Almaty on October 11 to those convicted of the murder of Kyrgyzstani journalist Gennadiy Pavlyuk in 2009, vital questions about the case linger. Was justice done for the reporter who was brutally defenestrated?
Aldayar Ismankulov (a Kyrgyz citizen and former member of Kyrgyzstan’s security services) was sentenced to 17 years in prison. His accomplices Shalkar Orazalin and Almas Igelikov (both Kazakh citizens) received 11 and 10 years respectively.
It’s not often that those guilty of perpetrating violence against journalists in Central Asia are taken to court at all, so the first reaction to the sentencing might be applause.
But wait a minute. Despite loudly voiced misgivings that the death of Pavlyuk – an investigative reporter who wrote under the pseudonym Ibragim Rustambek – was linked to Kyrgyz politics, the court appears to have swallowed the version propounded by Kazakh investigators earlier this year that this was a robbery gone wrong.
According to that theory, the thieves lured Pavlyuk 200 kilometers from Bishkek to Almaty purely to rob him. When they failed to extract satisfactory valuables from the reporter, they became so enraged that they bound his hands and feet and hurled him to his death from the sixth floor of an apartment building.
Pavlyuk’s associates have long pointed to the flaws in that theory – namely that the reporter was not a rich man and that defenestration seems something of an overreaction to the circumstances.
Television viewers in Kyrgyzstan will say goodbye to foreign news this weekend for the duration of the country’s presidential election season. Between September 25 and the October 30 ballot, Kyrgyzstan’s televisions stations and cable operators are forbidden from rebroadcasting foreign news bulletins that could affect the election’s outcome. Most operators have no choice but to suspend foreign news programming altogether.
Ata-Meken leader Omurbek Tekebayev, himself a presidential candidate, first proposed the ban this spring after he experienced a thorough bashing by Russian media during last year’s parliamentary polls. His party’s fifth-place finish, by most accounts due to the Russian pressure, was the season’s biggest political upset. The author of Kyrgyzstan’s 2010 constitution and one of the “revolutionaries” who came to power after street riots ousted President Kurmanbek Bakiyev that spring, Tekebayev is often called “pro-Western” and is said to have angered Moscow by endorsing a parliamentary form of government.
Tajik authorities are usually reluctant to trust Islamic extremists -- except when they’re ratting out others.
Just two months ago, Dushanbe dropped troublesome charges that a BBC reporter was a member of a banned Islamic radical group.
But this week a court in Khujand read a letter by an imprisoned “Hizb-ut-Tahrir leader” claiming that Urinboy Usmonov is indeed a supporter of the group, the Asia-Plus news agency reported on September 20.
Usmonov, who works for the BBC’s Uzbek service, was disappeared in June and later charged with being a member of Hizb-ut-Tahrir. He spent a month in jail, where he was denied legal counsel and claims he was tortured until a chorus of international opprobrium embarrassed Dushanbe into releasing him. He still faces charges of not informing Tajikistan’s security services about his meetings with Islamists, however – meetings he says he held as a reporter. The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists say the sham charge “criminalizes journalism.”
So what to make of the new testimony? Is someone in the government trying to resurrect the case against Usmonov? He is supposedly only being tried for not tattling on his sources. Could members of Tajikistan’s intelligence services be trying to save face, embarrassed at being reprimanded for the investigation and arrest?
Attacks on journalists are common in Kyrgyzstan. Attacks on Uzbeks are also common. Ergo, there is nothing surprising about an attack on an Uzbek journalist.
Shokhrukh Saipov was violently attacked in broad daylight on August 10. Saipov, 26, publishes UZpress.kg, which has reported on simmering ethnic tensions between Kyrgyz and Uzbeks in southern Kyrgyzstan since violence last year left over 400 people, mostly Uzbeks, dead.
Shokhrukh is the younger brother of the late Alisher Saipov, a journalist murdered outside his Osh office in 2007.
“Half his face was missing,” Shokhrukh’s father, Avas, said, in comments carried by Uznews.net. Avas fears his son did not receive adequate medical care because of his ethnicity, the report said. That is a legitimate concern given the rise of aggressive Kyrgyz nationalism since the ethnic violence.
Just how hazardous is it to report in Afghanistan? A graphic new picture of the sometimes lethal dangers facing journalists, mostly Afghan, over the past ten years details what we’ve all expected – it’s bad and getting worse.
The interactive map -- which highlights cases of harassment, beatings, kidnappings and other dangers, including murder – was just released by Nai, a media development organization based in Kabul. Nai collected the data on the 266 security incidents recorded (so far).
Each event includes a suspect: On May 27, 2006, for example, a male journalist from Aina TV was beaten on his way to parliament in Kabul, allegedly by the “president’s security officers.” In fact, sundry government officials are accused of carrying out a majority of the physical attacks, and issuing the most threats, the data shows.
“This interactive map enables us to tell the story of the struggles journalists face daily in Afghanistan, reaching potentially millions of people across the world - at a glance!” said Mujeeb Khalvatgar, Director of Nai. “Prior to this our detailed records of threats against journalists were published in reports and through radio, but could not convey the message so simply and succinctly,” said Khalvatgar.
Mousing over the map, for example, gives users the historical trend for a particular area where an attack has occurred. Data can be filtered by year, and viewed by province. The site also provides easily accessible information on the number of attacks, the media organization and gender of those targeted, and a safety index.
A journalist writes an article alleging financial irregularities at a Turkish municipality. Naturally, an investigation into the matter is launched -- in this case against the journalist, who ends up being fined by a court and prohibited from practicing her trade for a year. From Bianet's report on this strange and disturbing story:
Journalist Havva Karakaya from the local Kırşehir Posta newspaper was treated like a civil servant by the Kırşehir 2nd Criminal Court of First Instance. As reported on Thursday (28 July), the court decreed to prohibit Karakaya from performing his profession as a journalist for 375 days on the grounds of a news item he wrote.
In an interview with bianet, Karakaya said that he was going to lodge an appeal with the Court of Appeals 4th Chamber. He added that the lawyers he had consulted were also surprised about the decision.
Judge Kamuran Haydar presided over the final hearing. The court handed down a judicial fine corresponding to 300 days or ten months imprisonment respectively. The sentence stemmed from an article written by Karakaya on irregularities at the Kırşehir Municipality. Judge Haydar regarded the profession of journalism as a "professional organization comparable to a public institution" and prohibited Karakaya from performing his profession as a journalist for more than a year.
Karakaya added that he also received a monetary fine of TL 7,200 (€ 3,500). He told bianet that he was not going to step back from what he wrote and expressed his hope for the Court of Appeals' reversal.
Full story here. And a new report by the Committee to Protect Journalists on the press faced by parts of the Turkish media can be found here.
Think Tajikistan’s officials don’t care how their country is viewed abroad? Well, the release of a BBC reporter detained for one month on dubious charges of collusion with a radical group seems to have worried President Emomali Rakhmon. Journalist Urunboy Usmonov was released on July 14 just hours after Rakhmon’s advisor tried to distance the president from the arrest. (Usmonov is out, but still faces charges of not tattling on his alleged sources, members of Hizb-ut-Tahrir, and cannot leave the country.)
Suhrob Sharipov, head of the Strategic Research Centre under the Tajik President, was quoted by Asia-Plus as saying:
“Rakhmon recently visited Europe, where he had very important meetings with the leadership of various countries and bodies. [He] was trying to improve the republic’s image in Europe. Then he returns and this happens. So the displeasure of European bodies with which the president had just met followed immediately thereafter.”
(They were already displeased, actually, and told him so.)
According to Sharipov, the arrest – which brought widespread international condemnation -- was the fault of the overzealous security services, who may need to weed out incompetent officers from their ranks.
For the last few years, dark-haired news anchor Banu Guven was one of the main and most popular faces of Turkish news network NTV. This summer, soon after Turkey's June 12 parliamentary election, Guven was unexpectedly fired. The network has said little about why she was let go, but Guven claims it was because her bosses were worried that the airtime she wanted to give Kurdish activists and politicians in the run-up to the election might anger the government of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP). According to Guven, her request to interview Leyla Zana, a popular candidate (and now MP) with the pro-Kurdish Peace and Democracy Party (BDP), was shot down. Meanwhile, another pre-election show she did with well-known Kurdish novelist and activist Vedat Turkeli, in which her guest praised the jailed leader of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) and threw his support behind the BDP, has since been removed from NTV's online archives and appears to have further angered her bosses.
Guven has now issued an open letter to Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, accusing his government of fostering an environment that has forced media outlets to practice self-censorship if they want to stay alive. This accusation has been put forth before, mostly by members of Turkey's more secularist news organizations, but Guven is probably the most high-profile media figure to make the claim.
[UPDATE -- Good news: Urinboy Usmonov will be released on bail today, Dushanbe's Asia-Plus news agency reported one hour ago. But it sounds like he still faces the charges outlined below.]
A month after his arrest on dubious and politicized charges, BBC reporter Urinboy Usmonov is still languishing in a Tajik prison.
Usmonov, a correspondent for the BBC’s Uzbek-language service, was arrested on June 13 and charged with being a member of the Islamist group Hizb-ut-Tahrir, an accusation frequently leveled against government critics in Tajikistan. Though those charges were later dropped, the authorities seem unwilling to free him: Usmonov is now being held for not informing Tajikistan’s security services about his meetings with Hizb-ut-Tahrir members.
"The Tajik government is now prosecuting Urinboy Usmonov for not being a government informer," the Committee to Protect Journalists, a New York-based watchdog, said in a July 13 statement. "This action essentially criminalizes journalism. We call on the Tajik prosecutor to drop the charges against Usmonov and release him immediately."
The BBC marked the one-month anniversary by reiterating calls for Usmonov’s immediate release and highlighting concerns over his health and fragile mental state.
