Eurasian Transition Group

Reporters Without Borders today condemned a prosecution launched against, Natalya Buchuyeva, Deutsche Welle free-lancer, for tax evasion and failing to obtain accreditation, which has been brought by the prosecutor’s office in Tashkent.
There has been a dramatic increase in harassment of critical journalists since 2005 with those working for foreign media coming in for particular surveillance, the worldwide press freedom organisation said. Since 2006 they have all been forced to get official accreditation.
“This state of affairs is incompatible with the founding values of Europe and particularly of freedom of expression,” the organisation said. “We urge the European authorities not to ease sanctions against the regime of Islam Karimov as long as it continues to hound dissidents.”
Buchuyeva was summoned by the prosecutor’s office in the capital on 23 March, since when her family has heard nothing from her and she failed to turn up for a planned meeting today with her lawyer, Suhrob Ismailov. He said that the journalist, who is facing up to three years in prison, may have left the city.
The EU voted for sanctions against Uzbekistan following the May 2005 massacre in the eastern city Andijan in which around 800 people were killed, according to estimates by human rights groups (187 according to the Uzbekistan authorities). These sanctions were slightly eased on 13 November 2006 and are due to be reviewed in May 2007.
The Uzbek government in February 2006 adopted a new law to punish journalists working for foreign media who dare to criticise its policy. Under this law they can be sanctioned for interference “in internal affairs” or insulting “the honour and dignity of Uzbek citizens”. It also provides for accreditation to be cancelled in cases of infringement.
The procedure for applying for registration was extended from 10 days to two months and Articles 22 and 23 introduced additional restrictions banning both Uzbek and foreign citizens from cooperating with non-accredited journalists under pain of prosecution. Article 21 clearly equates journalists with terrorists by providing for the expulsion of anyone calling “for the overthrow of the constitutional order or for racial or religious hatred.”
Foreign media bureaux have been closed. Deutsche Welle was the latest to be shut down, following the BBC and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. The german radio has tried to get the necessary accreditations according to the new law but was not successful until today. Correspondents working for foreign media have also been assaulted or arrested, including Lobar Qaynarova, Vladislav Chekoyan, and Tulkin Karaev.

 
 
Reporters Without Borders defends imprisoned journalists and press freedom throughout the world. It has nine national sections (Austria, Belgium, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland). It has representatives in Bangkok, London, New York, Tokyo and Washington. And it has more than 120 correspondents worldwide.
 
 
 

© Reporters Without Borders 2007

8 February 2007
European Voice
The European Union was brave, precise and unequivocal when it imposed sanctions on Uzbek officials directly involved in the Andijan massacre of May 2005. In November 2006 the Council of Ministers decided that they would be prolonged for six months and reviewed after three months. It was very hard for observers not to see in that decision a tendency towards softening the sanctions as no clear review criteria were mentioned.
With the review deadline getting near, the EU corridors are again full of rumours about President Islam Karimov’s alleged “good will” and “readiness to make a gesture” towards Brussels.
Around Rond-Point Schuman, Realpolitikers will present many arguments to support lifting “ineffective sanctions”. But has any good news reached us from Uzbekistan in the meantime? Has the repression of journalists, human rights defenders or non-governmental organisation members softened? Has the situation in the prisons, in the court rooms – where allegations of torture are never taken into account – improved? Or in the cotton fields, where children are obliged to work in conditions close to slavery? Has the level of small, daily humiliations Uzbeks must swallow from the heavy-handed police in any way diminished? And has the government accepted that a credible independent commission can investigate in Andijan as the EU has demanded from the beginning?
Unfortunately to all these questions the blunt and short answer is ‘no’. And other questions about free and fair elections, or that the president’s legal mandate ended on 22 January without much notice, are not even being asked. Is the president not himself challenging the constitutional order far more obviously than the thousands of citizens jailed under such a charge?
Diplomacy being what it is and politics having its reasons que la raison ne connaît pas there will be voices in Europe ready to consider that perhaps allowing some diplomats to travel to the Ferghana valley would be enough progress to allow the EU to change its policy. All the more so given that the US has not followed the EU on imposing sanctions. We Europeans cannot stand our ground without them, can we?
For what purpose would the EU compro-mise its demands and values when the Uzbek president has done nothing concrete to improve the situation? For economic preferences? Anybody who has worked in that country knows that the ‘business regulations’ are designed as to oblige everybody to operate illegally, a perfect way to keep society under control. For hydrocarbons? Uzbekistan cannot export anything serious further than Bishkek.
Europe will get nothing in return for any ill-placed generosity towards this regime other than scorn. The Union of 27 should care deeply about being treated like a third-rank power by a provincial despot. With 26 million inhabitants, Uzbekistan certainly matters, but Karimov ceased to represent the aspirations of his nation a long time ago and buried the last bits of confidence for its citizens with the victims of Andijan.
And after all, who needs who the most? Is it less comfortable for Uzbekistan to have to limit its external relations to Russia and China than for the EU to keep only the very low diplomatic relationship it now maintains with this country? If Tashkent wants to improve contacts with the EU, it knows exactly what it should do. What the EU requires, at the end of the day, is far from threatening the Uzbek regime. Those in Europe who call for a dialogue with Karimov are either deceiving themselves or ill-informed on his ability to produce anything but long monologues.
The Uzbek nation, which deserves much better than the regime inherited from the collapse of the Soviet Union, will certainly remember how the EU treats it during these years. It will also remember the Russian eagerness to back the regime after Andijan and the US caution, much as Latin Americans remember how Washington too often courted their military dictatorships and vote accordingly today.
The foreign ministers should not shame Europe on 5-6 March by lifting sanctions that might be weak but still send a powerful message to Karimov and all who attempt to behave like him in the region. Softening them now would be a different kind of message, one from a very ‘soft power’ indeed.
Alain Délétroz is vice-president (Europe) of the International Crisis Group.
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The regime’s broad crackdown since May 2005 has also targeted local and foreign media. Foreign journalists are seen as agitators and “terrorists” and Uzbek freelances who work with them are prosecuted. Arrests, internment and blocked websites were routine for journalists in 2006.
Repression has become harsher since the 13 May 2005 uprising in the eastern town of Andijan, when about 800 people were killed, according to non-governmental organisations (187 according to the government). Offices of foreign media were closed and their staff forced to leave the country, including those of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), the US media aid organisation Internews and Radio Free Europe/ Radio Liberty.
The government cancelled the accreditation of Obid Shabanov, correspondent of the German broadcaster Deutsche Welle in the southern region of Bukhara, on 15 March 2006 and accused him of putting out inaccurate news in a 1 February programme on the station, when he reported that some 30 people had frozen to death in an unheated bus on its way to Moscow.
The government announced on 24 February that journalists working for foreign media that criticised official policies risked losing their accreditation for interfering in “internal affairs” or insulting the “dignity and reputation” of Uzbeks. The procedure for registering with the authorities was extended from 10 days to two months. Foreign and Uzbek journalists were forbidden to work with unaccredited Uzbek colleagues on pain of prosecution. Journalists were likened to terrorists and the decree said those who “called for the overthrow of the state or incited racial and religious hatred” would be deported.
Uzbek journalists were front-line targets of the crackdown. Six reporters on the government paper Pravda Vostoka were dismissed in July after the presidential office called them “politically unreliable.” The journalists (Jamilya Aipova, Olga Fazylova and others) contributed the independent website Tribune (www.tribune-uz.info). Two independent journalists, Ulugbek Khaidarov and Jamshid Karimov (the president’s nephew), were also victims. Karimov vanished on 12 September between his home and the hospital in Jizak where his mother was a patient. His family found out on 5 October that he had been interned in a mental hospital and would be held there for at least five months. Khaidarov was arrested on 14 September and falsely accused of “extortion and blackmail” after a woman approached him at a bus stop and stuffed some banknotes in his pocket that he quickly threw on the ground. Police arrested him a few seconds later. He was sentenced to six years in prison by a court in Jizak on 5 October before being freed without explanation a month later.
Sabirjon Yakubov, former correspondent for the independent paper Hurriyat, was freed on 4 April 2006 after charges against him of “undermining constitutional order” and “involvement with a extremist religious organisation” were dropped. He had been arrested in Tashkent on 11 April 2005 and been imprisoned in an intelligence services (SNB) detention centre.
Internet users were also targeted. All local service providers (ISPs) have been forced since November 2005 to use the state-controlled telecom operator Uzbektelecom, which enables the regime to compile blacklists. The website of independent journalist Sergei Ezhkov, Uzmetronom.com, was blocked in June 2006. He is one of the very few journalists openly critical of the regime.
Alo Khojayev, editor of the website Tribune-uz, decided to close it down in early July, as he and his family had been receiving threats since May 2005, when he posted online news about the Andijan uprising that contradicted the official version. The authorities refused to let him leave the country, even though he had hounded and efforts made to intimidate him, so he stopped working as a journalist.