Russian Journalist Deported as Enemy of Uzbekistan
By Nelli Monastyrskaya The Moscow News
The Uzbek ruling authorities forbid the export of information
26.08.05 Friday
 
Following a recent anti-presidential uprising, Uzbekistan has become a closed, insulated republic. No information about what is going on there is allowed out of the country. Nor are Russian or other foreign journalists, who try to see the situation with their own eyes, allowed into the country. According to the Center for Journalism in Extreme Situations, from May 13 until July 2005 more than 50 reporters were denied visas or accreditation by the Uzbek Foreign Ministry. A case in point showing that the Uzbek ruling authorities mean business is the deportation of Igor Rotar, a Russian journalist working for the Forum 18 Norwegian organization.

The Russian media linked your detention and subsequent deportation with journalistic investigations into the violation of religious minority rights in Central Asia. Could this have been the reason for the inhospitable treatment that you received from the Uzbek authorities or were your reports on the events in Andizhan in May 2005 also a factor here?

I am a staff correspondent of Forum 18, a Norwegian organization, in Central Asia. We study the violation of believers' rights in the former Communist countries. But the behavior of the republic's authorities was probably unrelated to the purpose of my business trip (Rotar was going to check up on reports of the alleged persecution and harassment of ethnic Kazakhs who had adopted Christianity, in Karakalpakia, an autonomous region of Uzbekistan. - Ed.).

I believe that the problem lay elsewhere. Before the Andizhan events, despite the widespread human rights violations, Uzbekistan at least tried to maintain the image of a democratic country - mostly for the West. Yet after the Uzbek authorities issued an ultimatum on the withdrawal of U.S. military bases from the republic's territory, they could not care less about Western opinion. In fact, they actually admit to this themselves.

It is quite possible that Andizhan was a factor in my deportation. I was there at that time, reporting on the events in the city. But if this is really so, one can only regret this stupidity on the part of the Uzbek ruling authorities since I for one had taken a neutral position in reporting on the Andizhan events. Western rights activists and journalists indeed took an oversimplified view of the situation: The tyrant Islam Karimov broke up a peaceful rally, killing women and children. For my part, I tried to provide an objective picture of the situation: The rally was not at all peaceful; there were militants who had placed hostages - women and children - along the perimeter of the city square, chaining them together with metal wire. When something like this happens in a corrupt and poor country which, in addition, has an unprofessional military, it is extremely difficult to avoid civilian casualties. After a series of meetings with the hostages who had been tortured by militants, I almost justified the Karimov regime in my reports. Strangely enough, Uzbek propaganda did not use those facts to defend the authorities' actions in breaking up the public rally.

In other words, you do not agree with those politicians and journalists who, in the wake of the Andizhan events, started referring to Islam Karimov's regime as "bloody"?

I would not call Karimov's regime bloody. Rather, it is outdated, stupid, and out of touch with reality. Uzbekistan still has many hangovers from the Soviet era. For example, under the existing laws, peasants may lease land, but it is local authorities who tell them what to grow. For the most part they are told to grow cotton which is then bought up at one-tenth the price that it fetches in neighboring Kyrgyzstan or Kazakhstan. Here is another example: To encourage the local population to buy domestic goods, the Uzbek authorities substantially increase import prices. As a result, Russian goods in Uzbekistan, for instance, cost several times as much as they do in Kazakhstan where incidentally, wages and living standards are much higher. All of this happens through the appalling incompetence, narrow-mindedness, and corruption of the Uzbek ruling authorities.

You have worked in Uzbekistan for quite some time. What is the situation with the freedom of speech there now?

There are almost no local independent media organizations there. This is due to both political and economic reasons. A journalist in Tashkent cannot make more than $50 a month. So many of them go to work in other countries. The local print and electronic media is extremely boring. Although censorship has been officially abolished, Uzbek mass media outlets are seriously affected by self-censorship. No one dares criticize the ruling authorities. There is no formal censorship, but there are political recommendations and general guidelines that state officials "hand down" to media directors. Thus, when Islam Karimov was friendly with the United States, the local press was forbidden to criticize the U.S. military campaign in Iraq. Now no one is allowed to make any negative comments on the way the authorities handled the Andizhan situation. There are occasional publications indirectly critical of the performance by the country's ruling authorities. For example, stories reporting on the country's poor living standards. But it is categorically forbidden to directly criticize top state or government officials.
http://english.mn.ru/english/issue.php?2005-32-13