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.
Here’s some rare – if tentative – positive news for a detained journalist in Tajikistan. Authorities appear ready to drop the most serious charges against BBC reporter Urinboy Usmonov – membership in a banned Islamic extremist group. But he still faces accusations that could test Tajik law and further erode media freedoms.
Usmonov was nabbed on June 13 and later charged with belonging to Hizb-ut-Tahrir. The arrest, concerns he may have been beaten in custody, and authorities’ apparent unwillingness to allow Usmonov access to counsel prompted an international outcry and demands for his immediate release. The Committee to Protect Journalists, a New York-based watchdog, said the “trumped-up charges” were designed to silence a government critic.
The BBC’s Russian Service reports that Usmonov, 59, still faces charges of contacting members of the radical group – which has never been linked to violence and is legal in some western countries, such as the UK – and reporting their statements without alerting authorities. Yet his lawyer says Tajik law guarantees the right for journalists to protect their sources, according to Reporters Without Borders (RSF).
Concerns are growing about the fate of a BBC journalist detained in northern Tajikistan. Urinboy Usmonov, who has worked with the BBC Central Asian Service for ten years, was arrested on June 13, accused of being a member of a banned Islamic movement. Media rights activists say he has not had access to a lawyer and believe he has been beaten in custody. Usmonov, 59, is diabetic and suffers from high blood pressure.
Authorities told the AP that Usmonov is suspected of membership in Hizb-ut-Tahrir, an Islamic movement banned throughout Central Asia, but which operates legally in some western countries and has never been tied to violence.
Journalists who know Usmonov say he has reported on Hizb-ut-Tahrir, but that he is a secular man. If he had copies of banned material, they said, it was simply so he could do his job.
Kyrgyzstan’s parliament has voted unanimously to ban the independent news website fergananews.com (formerly Ferghana.ru).
After weeks of heated debate over the causes of last summer’s ethnic violence, lawmakers cast votes on a resolution including the ban, and blaming Uzbek “separatist” leaders for organizing the clashes. Ninety-five approved; none opposed.
The resolution instructed the Ministry of Culture and Information, the Ministry of Justice and the Prosecutor General's Office “to take steps to block the site Ferghana.ru in the information space of the republic.”
Moscow-based Ferghana.ru – singled out for offering alternatives to the nationalist narrative that Uzbek separatists are to blame for the tragedy – has been blocked in Kyrgyzstan in the past, just before periods of intense political upheaval, such as immediately preceding the ousters of both Askar Akayev in 2005 and Kurmanbek Bakiyev in 2010.
Editor Daniil Kislov called on authorities to act based on the law, not “emotional hostility.”
“It would be very sad to see post-revolutionary Kyrgyzstan on a par with other states that are Internet enemies,” Kislov said in a story on the website.
In the same article, the head of the Coalition for Democracy and Civil Society, Dinara Oshurahunova, said the resolution was a violation of the law, as the legislature has no authority to determine guilt, which is the province of the courts. She also pointed out that the blocking of websites helped precipitate the events that led to Bakiyev’s bloody ouster last year.
Internet giant Google has lashed out at Kazakhstan, accusing it of “creating borders on the web” in ways that threaten to hamper Internet freedom and “create a fractured Internet.”
Astana is among governments “attempting to create borders on the web without full consideration of the consequences their actions may have on their own citizens and the economy,” Google Senior Vice President Bill Coughran said in a blog posting.
The crux of Google’s complaint is that, under new rules announced last month, Kazakhstan requires all .kz domain names to operate using servers that are physically located inside the country – and that includes www.google.kz.
This would require Google to alter its current policy of handling requests “the fastest way possible, regardless of national boundaries,” and instead routing searches to servers within Kazakhstan by default.
To get around a policy that Google says raises questions “not only about network efficiency but also about user privacy and free expression,” the company has decided to redirect users from www.google.kz to www.google.com in the Kazakh language. It is warning, however, that search quality will deteriorate, as results won’t be country-customized.
