CENTRAL ASIA: Press freedom throughout region worsening

[ This report does not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations]

ANKARA, 3 May 2005 (IRIN) - The freedom of the press is continuing to deteriorate throughout much of Central Asia, with few signs of improvement in the region of 55 million inhabitants, according to Pascale Bonnamour, head of the European desk for Reporters Without Borders (RSF).

"The level of press freedom in Central Asia is getting worse each year," she told IRIN speaking from Paris on Tuesday, World Press Freedom Day, citing recent geopolitical changes and events in the former Soviet Union over the past six months.

"There have been a lot of changes occurring," Bonnamour said, referring to what she described as the "soft revolutions" in Ukraine and Georgia, as well as most recently in Kyrgyzstan. Authorities in Central Asia remain concerned that they may see such pro-democracy movements repeated in their own countries. This has prompted them to pre-emptively clamp down on all forms of possible dissent, including the press, she explained.

Her comments coincide with RSF's annual report on the state of press freedom in the world, released to mark World Press Freedom Day. Included in the report, the media watchdog group released a list of what it called 34 media freedom ‘predators.’ These are leaders and organisations around the world that it accuses of "direct responsibility for press freedom violations."

These ‘predators’ have been responsible for threats, physical attacks, imprisonment and even the murder of journalists in 2004, the Paris-based group maintain. But it was the hermit-state of Turkmenistan, one of three Central Asian states listed alongside Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan, that received a particularly scathing review.

"The situation in Turkmenistan is very grave," the RSF official claim, noting that the personal safety of journalists has inhibited anyone from working in the largely desert, but energy-rich nation.

"We don't receive a lot of information from Turkmenistan because it is very dangerous. There is no private media in the country and consequently, no independent media," she said.

Echoing that view, Anna Sunder-Plassman, a researcher at Amnesty International, told IRIN from London: "All domestic media is state-controlled and the authorities have taken a series of measures aimed at preventing access to alternative sources of information."

Websites that publicise "unwanted" information are routinely blocked, with authorities paying intimidating house calls on individuals whom they have identified as visiting such sites, she added.

But the situation in neighbouring Uzbekistan is not much better. Only recently, Sabirjon Yakubov, a journalist for the independent weekly newspaper Hurriyet (Liberty), faced up to 20 years imprisonment under Article 159 of the criminal code for "undermining the constitutional order."

"Just because he wrote about the revolution in the Ukraine, he could get 20 years in prison," Bonnamour said.

In Tajiksitan, where the independent media remain under threat, and Kazakhstan, the region's largest nation, RSF saw little sign of improvement.

"We remain very concerned about the level of press freedom in Kazakhstan," she said, referring to last month's political upheaval in neighbouring Kyrgyzstan. There was some cause for hope there when the Kyrgyz state-run Kabar news agency reportedly began openly criticising the new interim government. The new government took office in March following the ouster of then president Askar Akaev, who was overthrown during public protests for democracy and reform.

"This could be a positive sign," Bonnamour said, cautioning it was too early to say for sure. "We don't really know the orientation of the country's new power," she said, referring to the interim government. "We need to wait a bit longer to determine whether this will be a positive development."

[ENDS]