Activists warn of further media crackdown

Media watchdog groups warn of a further crackdown on press freedom as the trial of 15 men charged with trying to overthrow the Uzbek government in the southern city of Andijan last May enters its second week. "We are deeply concerned about the escalating crackdown on journalists by the Uzbek authorities," Pascale Bonamour, head of Europe desk for Reporters Without Borders (RSF), said from Paris on Monday. Upwards of 1,000 civilians may have been killed in Andijan on 13 May, according to some rights groups, when Uzbek security forces opened fire on protesters demonstrating against the authoritarian regime of Uzbek President Islam Karimov, who has ruled Central Asia's most populous state since the collapse of the former Soviet Union in 1991. Likened to China's Tiananmen Square massacre of 1989, Uzbek authorities have adamantly denied all requests for an independent international inquiry, placing the official death toll at 187 and staging a well choreographed trial of the revolt's so called ring leaders in the capital, Tashkent. But among the accused was the media itself, something which could have far-reaching consequences for a society where freedom of the press was already poor. The Uzbeks believe it’s a foreign plot, with foreign journalists and foreign media at the helm, Bonamour maintained, warning it would be nearly impossible for any independent journalist to operate freely. "There is a great deal of pressure under Karimov and since Andijan, that pressure has worsened," she claimed. As the trial began, Uzbek prosecutor Anvar Nabiyev said Western aid groups, human rights organisations and foreign media had launched an information war against the Uzbek government, accusing them of bias and of having planned the events in Andijan, along with militant Islamic groups. Collaborating that further, in what appeared like well rehearsed statements, the 15 alleged leaders, all of whom pleaded guilty on 20 September, accused the Western media of organising the revolt. The defendants called the Andijan revolt a "foreign plot", claiming among other things that Western journalists had been "financed by foreign terrorist organisations" and encouraged the accused to "imitate a peaceful revolution to create chaos," an RSF statement read. RSF is not alone in its concern. On Thursday, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) called on Karimov to stop scapegoating the press and to end his government's campaign of intimidation and repression against the independent media. The government crackdown, which had targeted several international news organisations in dozens of incidents over four months, was part of a broad effort to obscure the full extent of the 13 May massacre in Andijan, the New York-based group said. "We demand that President Karimov halt the politicised use of the courts, police, and security services to silence reporters," CPJ Executive Director Ann Cooper said. "His government wants to hide the terrible events in Andijan and shift blame on to journalists who simply reported what happened." In the months since, retaliation against journalists had been severe, CPJ research showed, with some journalists requesting that the watchdog group refrain from publicising abuses they had encountered out of fear they may face further retribution. Journalists working for the Uzbek service of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) have been threatened, detained, searched, and assaulted, the news organisation noted, while some had been placed under surveillance and had their belongings confiscated, a CPJ statement said, adding journalists' families had been threatened and harassed as well. In all, RFE/RL has documented more than 30 cases of attacks on its journalists. On 19 September, an appeals court in the northeastern city of Namangan upheld the recent conviction of Nosir Zokirov, a journalist for the Uzbek service of RFE/RL. Zokirov was sentenced to six months in prison on a charge related to his reporting on Andijan. Zokirov, an Uzbek national who had worked for the US government-funded news service for eight years, was reportedly summoned to court, charged with insulting a security officer, tried without counsel or witnesses, sentenced, and imprisoned - all on 26 August. "We call on the authorities to release RFE/RL reporter Nosir Zokirov immediately and allow all journalists to work freely and without fear of Soviet-style repression," CPJ's Cooper said. But such fear looks set to continue. According to the CPJ, in recent weeks the authorities have initiated a smear campaign in the state media accusing journalists from the BBC, Deutsche Welle, the Associated Press (AP), and RFE/RL of organising "informational attacks" against Uzbekistan and trying to use the protest in Andijan to overthrow the government and establish an Islamic state. At least four journalists working for the London-based Institute for War & Peace Reporting have fled the country after being briefly detained and threatened with criminal prosecution, according to CPJ sources. Former IWPR reporter Galima Bukharbaeva, who witnessed and documented the killings in Andijan, was among those who fled. Meanwhile, three of the defendants on trial described on Monday how they had trained at military camps in neighboring Kyrgyzstan, further collaborating the government's claim of a conspiracy that included foreign fighters and funding. According to the AP report, the testimony by the three, all ethnic Uzbek citizens of Kyrgyzstan, opened the second week of the carefully choreographed trial. Tashkent hopes the trial will refute accusations of a massacre by government troops, supporting its claim that extremist Islamic groups from abroad were responsible.