Free press is battered in post-soviet Central Asia
Repression of news media is increasing and indiscriminate

By Douglas FRANTZ

TASHKENT, Uzbekistan - Across the former Soviet lands of Central Asia, repression of news media is increasing and indiscriminate, say Western diplomats, local journalists and representatives of foreign and domestic private groups monitoring the region's progress - or lack of it - in building democracy.

Many of those watching the governments of the five countries - Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan - detect mounting pressure on any news outlets that veer from the government line, and they say the actions reflect the way Central Asia's authoritarian leaders have consolidated power.

The largest newspapers in Tashkent are government-financed.

"The media have been emasculated completely most places," Jerzy Wieclaw, head of the Kyrgyzstan office of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, said in his office in the Kyrgyz capital, Bishkek.

Stuart Auerbach, director of development for the Media Development Loan Fund, an American foundation assisting independent news organizations, described the situation as horrible. "There is no real independent media in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, once the bright spots, and it's worse in the other countries," Mr. Auerbach said.

Aside from the routine financial difficulties inherent in poor countries, journalists in Central Asia have faced arrest, visits from tax inspectors and sometimes authorities with padlocks. In extreme cases, journalists may be beaten, and a few have been killed.

Officials in the region said they did not advocate violence, but they said tough restrictions were necessary because what appeared to be an independent press was often aligned with insurgents trying to overthrow the government. Indeed, as in many formerly Communist nations, some newspapers that do not toe the official line are simply mouthpieces for opposition politicians.

Avazbek Khodjimetov, an official with the Uzbek Foreign Ministry, said newspapers and television stations get into trouble if they call for war, violence or dissension. "This kind of activity will be defined as subversive," he said, "and it is illegal."

In Turkmenistan, regarded as the most repressive of the five countries, the state controls and licenses all publishing, and newspapers carry front-page notices that they are sponsored by President Saparmurat A. Niyazov, who was elected president for life last December. The government extended its control to the Internet in May by closing down independent service providers and consolidating service with a state- owned company.

Karavan, the last major independent media company in Kazakhstan, was sold two years ago after its owner ran into tax troubles. The buyer was President Nursultan A. Nazarbayev's daughter, Dariga, who already owned the major television channels and the other national daily newspaper.

Along with Karavan's newspaper and television station, she got a new printing plant that had been financed indirectly by the American government to encourage independent newspapers.

Here in Uzbekistan, Central Asia's most populous country, the main independent media holding companies are owned by close allies of President Islam A. Karimov or government officials. The largest newspapers are financed by the government and printed in its plants.

In a holdover from the Soviet era, the Committee for the Protection of State Secrets reviews articles before publication in most newspapers. When it comes to the Internet, the government effectively controls and monitors traffic by requiring service providers to use a government server, as in Turkmenistan.

Uzbekistan also has a so-called "insult law," which makes it a crime to criticize the president, his family, other officials or public institutions. Prison is more than an idle threat for those who violate it, and the government's reach is long.

Ukrainian police arrested two Uzbek journalists in exile, Muhammad Bekjanov and Iusuf Ruzimuradov, last year and sent them to Tashkent to face charges of distributing a banned newspaper that was alleged to have slandered Mr. Karimov. Mr. Bekjanov was sentenced to 14 years in prison and Mr. Ruzimuradov to 15 years.

Even the powerful British Broadcasting Corporation suffered retaliation after reporting on human rights problems. The government responded by switching the BBC's Uzbek- language radio broadcast to a band that can be picked up only by old Soviet shortwave radios, severely limiting the audience.

"For all intents and purposes, the government completely controls mass media," one Western diplomat said.

A few days before parliamentary elections late last year, the government shut down two of the country's most popular commercial television stations. The official reason was that their licenses had lapsed, though both had renewal requests pending.

"Society needs objective information, and that is what we were trying to provide," Shukrat Babajanov, one of three brothers who operated one of the stations, ALC-TV, said in an interview. "But there is no tradition of a free press here."

The other station was allowed to resume broadcasting after the elections, but ALC-TV

remained off the air and was closed permanently in June. A cabinet-level commission said the five-year-old station had broadcast negative information and opinions that differed from those of the government.

Mr. Babajanov and his brothers, Kudrat and Gayrat, had high hopes when they started ALC-TV in the western city of Urganch in 1995. After taking part in the opposition movement during the heady days before independence in 1991, they concluded that the media were the best way to spread democracy.

"The station was a gift to the people who were able to speak through ALC's cameras," said Mr. Babajanov, 37, an artist who became the station director and an on-air reporter while one brother was anchor and the other was technical director.

With help from Internews, an American nonprofit organization that trains broadcast journalists in emerging democracies, the brothers built a popular operation on a shoestring budget. They concentrated on local stories like the quality of food at schools and the crash of a passenger plane from the government-owned airline.

Local officials complained about the coverage, but the brothers were not prepared when the authorities seized the station because its license had lapsed. They had applied for renewal on time, but the government had not responded, Mr. Babajanov said.

Several other stations with pending renewal applications were allowed to continue broadcasting, and it appeared that ALC-TV and Aloka TV had been singled out because of their aggressive coverage, said Scott Smith, the country representative for Internews at the time.

Since ALC was finally shut down in June, Mr. Babajanov said, he and his brothers have been harassed by tax inspectors and the security police, and they face bankruptcy.

For the artist-turned-journalist, it is unpleasantly reminiscent of Soviet times. "Then and now, the mass media was an instrument for the government," he said.