IWPR wrestles with accreditation

Work by the critically acclaimed Institute for War and Peace Reporting (IWFP) in Uzbekistan may be under threat, given Tashkent's adamant refusal to renew the media organisation's press credentials. The international award-winning service, known for its investigative journalism, is read by hundreds of thousands of people daily worldwide. "They said that if I continued my work it would be considered illegal," Galima Bukharbayeva, the Uzbek head of IWFR, told IRIN from the Kazakh commercial capital of Almaty on Thursday. Her comments follow a recent decision by the Uzbek Foreign Ministry not to extend the UK-based group's credentials, a fact which could jeopardise its future operations in Central Asia's most populous state. IWPR, which has offices throughout the region, first began working in Uzbekistan in spring 2000, formally opening an office in the capital Tashkent, in April 2001. It currently employs a team of contributors throughout the country, as well as two full time staff members. And though the Uzbek Foreign Ministry had provided IWPR the necessary accreditation for one year beginning in September 2001, efforts to renew them have since proven unsuccessful. According to Bukharbayeva, in May 2003, a letter was delivered stating that because IWPR worked in conflict zones, and there had been no conflicts in the country since independence in 1991, there was no need for them to stay. But criticism of the country's authoritarian government and what observers describe as an abysmal human rights record - one of the worst in Central Asia - has never been taken lightly by Tashkent, and could be another factor to consider. "We are trying to convince the Uzbek authorities that objective journalism is not some sort of negative thing," Anna McTaggart, senior operations office for IWPR told IRIN from London. "It is not necessarily an attack on them, which is how they perceive it," she said, adding they were trying to persuade them of the merits of free and fair reporting and the benefits work both ways. Meanwhile, Bukharbayeva worries about her personal safety. "For me, it means it's not safe at all to work in Uzbekistan and for all of my team. It is a threat that the government can do whatever they want, [and] they have already sent me a warning," she claimed. "We have to return to Uzbekistan. I am in Kazakhstan - Almaty at the moment, and still do not know when I will be able to come back," the IWPR staff member exclaimed. Despite diplomatic pressure from the US and others, the situation remained bleak, she said, warning by March, other international NGOs, including Human Rights Watch (HRW), the US-based National Democrate Institute for International Affairs (NDI), and the US-based International Republican Institute (IRI), would face similar problems when they attempted to re-register themselves with the Uzbek Justice Ministry. [For more information on IWPR see: www.iwpr.net]