Uzbekistan: What Color is Your Revolution?

Michael Hedges May 14, 2005

Media lock-down preceeded the civil unrest in Uzbekistan. And it continues. This dictator wants nothing to do with those “colorful revolutions.”
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Uzbek president Islam Karimov rules this largest Central Asian country of the former Soviet orbit with an iron hand. After his neighbor in Kyrgyzstan, President Askar Akayev, took flight to Moscow when it looked like protests of his repressive regime would turn him out, Karimov moved to stop suspicious media activity. First to go was the Open Society Institute, the media advocate funded by George Soros.

As usual, foreign media was ordered shut down and foreign journalists were told to leave.

UPI correspondent Marina Kozlova was denied accreditation in April for not having a journalism degree. Kozlova has previously been accredited and worked in the UPI Tashkent bureau for ten years. The US-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) sent a protest letter. Kozlova lost accreditation, according to CPJ, in 2003 for “asking a deputy Foreign Minister about the fate of Ruslan Sharipov, an independent journalist and human rights activist imprisoned on politicized charges.”

In April the Uzbek Prosecutor-general’s office announced an investigation of Internews, an internationally recognized media training organization, for operating without a license, a criminal charge. Last September a court in the Uzbek capital Tashkent closed Internews-Uzbekistan, the local affiliate of Internews Network, for failing to register its logo, change of address and report activities outside the capital. Shortly before that action, Internews-Uzbekistan inconveniently released a project documenting government media abuses.

US-funded RFE/RL, reporting the case against Internews, said “some observers say the case against Internews is based on little more than the deep desire of the government to see Western-funded groups thrown out of the country.”

Internews operates in over forty countries and occasionally upsets dictators by training journalists. Internews-Uzbekistan has operated for over ten years. Internews Network is well regarded as scrupulously non-political. The Internews office in Tashkent has not been closed; however, its financial accounts have been frozen.

The Open Society Institute may or may not have contributed to the Orange Revolution in Ukraine, the Rose Revolution in Georgia or the 1989 Czechoslovak Velvet Revolution. Soros, a Hungarian refugee turned US citizen and multi-millionaire, is quite openly disdainful of left-over dictators from the Soviet era. When the Open Society Institute was tossed out of Uzbekistan, Soros said the country has “a horrendous human rights record.” Soros is also not a fan of the current US administration, contributing cash to the opposition candidate in last year’s presidential campaign.

The US administration is on record supporting democratic movements within former Soviet States and, according to sources, contributed as much as $35 million to Ukraine’s Orange Revolution. Those same sources estimate Russia’s contribution to opposing the Orange Revolution at $160 million. The US operates Karshi-Kanabad Airbase in southern Uzbekistan supporting the war on terror in Afghanistan. Recent moves by President Karimov suggest to some observers a turn away from US influence and toward Russia.

The recent violence in Andijan started, according to various press accounts, when armed citizens broke into a local prison to free two dozen local businessmen accused of Islamic extremism. President Karimov quickly pointed to an Islamic movement as the culprit. Dozens were reported killed as Uzbek police fired on protesters. Human rights organizations and other observers in the region dismiss that notion, suggesting the motive is rampant poverty and a repressive government. Andijan is located in the Fergana Valley, geographically and ethnically attached to Kyrgyzstan, where popular demonstrations chased out its post-Soviet dictator. The area is considered religious, conservative and tribal.

Earlier this month, Karimov’s government withdrew from GUUAM, a regional organization of former Soviet States: Ukraine, Georgia, Moldova, Azerbaijan and Uzbekistan. Leaving GUUAM is a “consequence of the activity of the young presidents of Georgia and Ukraine, specifically, of their desire to spread the ‘color revolutions’ and turn GUUAM into an anti-Russian organization,” said CIS Institute Director Konstantin Zatulin to EurasiaNet.

Andijan, in the far east of Uzbekistan, is densely populated, poor and viewed as independent-thinking. Russian State Duma chairman on international affairs Konstantin Kosachev, quoted by Russian news agency RIA Novosti, said “we have expected alarming events to happen there sooner or later.”

Kosachev told journalists that the Andijan uprising was not a “velvet revolution” and that protestors should be under no “illusion” that any “desired result” would take place. He refused to draw any conclusions, citing lack of information, whether the events in Andijan were purely local or “only the beginning.”

Karimov’s government has often jailed opponents – and journalists – for a variety of crimes, of dubious reality.

Ruslan Sharipov, who fled the country after release from prison on furlough, was charged and convicted of sodomy in 2003. He had previously headed the Independent Union of Journalists of Uzbekistan.

According to information acquired by the International Press Institute (IPI) “religious extremism” was the charge against Hurriyat journalist Sobirdjon Yakubov, arrested in April. Yakubov, a practicing Muslim, wrote about his Mecca pilgrimage and also wrote critically about the impact on human rights in Uzbekistan after the arrival of the US air base. In 2003 free-lance journalist Ghairat Mekhliboev, a stringer for Hurriyat, was sentenced to a seven-year prison term for membership in the Islamic organization Hizb-ut-Tahir.

Internet journalists have not escaped watchful eyes. Journalist Ulugbek Khaidarov was “beaten,” according to RFE/RL, on April 23rd after his name appeared on a “blacklist” posted on an internet site. Yakubov has written extensively about Gyorgy Gongadze, the Ukrainian internet journalist beheaded in 1999. Calls for an investigation into Gongadze’s murder became a center-piece of the Orange Revolution and the chief suspect committed suicide before being questioned.

BBC and CNN, usually offered on a privately owned cable service, were dropped on Friday (13 May) for Uzbek programming and foreign films. According RIA Novosti, CNN’s program stream was replaced with Uzbek cultural programs. Music videos replaced the Russian television channel NTV.

State broadcaster Uzteleradio produces four television channels and four radio channels. Several privately owned radio and television station operate in Uzbekistan, and at least one private radio station in the Fergana Valley, including Andijan. In 1996 Internews-Uzbekistan organized a news programming pool for the small, regional television stations. Radio Grand, operating in Tashkent, is supported by the Konrad Adenauer Foundation.

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Uzbek Hammer Blunts News Coverage – December 13, 2005

The Uzbek Foreign Affairs Ministry delivered notice (December 12) to RFE/RL denying accreditation to its Tashkent office and suspending accreditation of four individual journalists.

The letter sent to RFE/RL’s Prague center complained of the "use a number of Uzbek citizens as so-called foreign correspondents who work as journalists illegally and without Foreign Ministry accreditation in the territory of Uzbekistan, thus breaking Uzbek law."

Uzbek president Islam Karimov’s government received considerable, and unwanted, attention from foreign media starting in May, when several hundred demonstrators were shot by the military. Several RFE/RL Uzbek correspondents have been threatened, interrogated or beaten since that episode, according to the broadcasters statement. The BBC closed its Tashkent bureau in October citing harassment by authorities.

Official accreditation for RFE/RL’s Tashkent bureau expired in August, at which time former President Tom Dine reapplied. Nothing was heard from the Foreign Affairs Ministry for four months except that the applications were “under review.” Expecting the delay, but suspicious, RFE/RL continued reporting with a reduced Tashkent staff.