Media and Internet
There is a new film in Hollywood that has Uzbekistan written all over it.
The Uzbek and South Korean co-produced film “Hanaan” (meaning “Promised Land” or “Paradise” in Korean) is being screened at this year’s Audi sponsored American Film Institute Festival (AFI FEST), being held from November 3rd to 10th 2011 in the film capital of the world, Los Angeles.
Central Asia News informs that the AFI FEST qualifies for the Short Films category of the annual Academy Awards, as recognized by The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. AFI is an independent national non-profit organization, which seeks to preserve the legacy of America’s film heritage and pass it onto future generations, was founded in 1967 by the National Endowment for the Arts.
Read the full story »
Editor’s note: The Turkmenet may be very small and very young, but it’s certainly developing at a remarkable rate, and not always in ways that can be clearly said to be good or bad. neweurasia’s Annasoltan explores the rise of hacking in this new space and its particularly Turkmen flavor. [The images above are proxy instructions for a Symbian-enabled smartphone from a Turkmen social site. Sensitive information has been removed from them for security reasons.]
Despite the Internet having so little penetration in Turkmenistan – somewhere in the vicinity of 1.6% of the population or 80,400 users according to the World Bank and United Nation’s International Telecommunication Union (ITU) – already it’s exhibiting many of the hallmarks of a much more mature cyberscape, right down to hackers.
The cyber-attack against the Chronicles of Turkmenistan this past summer, not to mention the related e-mail sent to neweurasia, was quite an eye-opener on the Turkmenet’s rapidly increasing capacities for digital misbehavior (although Schwartz suspects that the hacker from that incident, “0fx0”, was a hired gun). Since then, there have been cyber-attacks against the personal accounts of several prominent Turkmen journalists and human rights activists, including against a close friend of mine.
However, far less dramatic has been the emergence of more “mundane” — but no less dangerous — forms of hacking.
Screen capture of footage from APA.
Editor’s note: At the end of October, Baku hosted the second annual medium forum of Turkic-speaking nations. It’s an interesting example of pan-Turkism’s small revival in the region, and neweurasia’s Tomyris reports on official views of the event.
On October 28th, the Second Media Forum of the Turkic-speaking Countries and Communities was held in Baku, Azerbaijan. The event was organized by the Press Council and the Mass Media State Support Fund, under the President of Azerbaijan, Ilham Aliyev.
Trend.Az News informs that the symbolic day in Baku brought upon The Coordination Centre of Turkic-speaking media outlets, under the decision of the Second Media Forum. Local committees for individual countries and societies were formed and the individual Committee Chairmen elected as members of the Coordinating Council. At the meeting, a chairman for the media union was elected – Aflatun Amashov, Chairman of the Press Council.
Some committee members include:
“… Trend Agency, the Press Council, the Mass Media State Support Fund under the Azerbaijani President and Azerbaijani Union of Journalists, were elected members of the local committee on Azerbaijan.”
In Kyrgyzstan, this weekend has hopefully initiated the start of a positive new era for the country (although, of course,time will tell). It’s also signalling another new beginning: neweurasia and Global Voices Online (GVO) are teaming up!
In fact, we’ve already had long-standing informal ties with GVO. For instance, our former Kazakhstan country coordinator Adil Nurmakov heads up their Central Asia wing, and many of us in the core team are friendly with GVO’s co-founder, the ever-likable Ethan Zuckerman. The new partnership shall begin modestly, with logo-exchanging on our respective Russian sites and content cross-fertilization. In the future, however, we’re hoping to coordinate on some more interesting or in-depth projects together.
The deal was brokered on our side by Ollie and Yelena, indeed, this was the latter’s parting act in her old position as Russian Managing Editor before taking on her new post as Social Media Officer. I must say that I’m grateful to both of them for taking this on, as I’ve simply been too busy with other initiatives to give this proper focus.
While an anti-child labor in Uzbekistan international campaign draws attention of more and more people, provoking authorities to tighten control over independent rights activists, who monitor the violations of child rights and report them to international NGOs, Uzbek official media puts “letters of admiration and inspiration” from Uzbeks as a response to President Karimov’s congratulatory message to cotton growers.
Narodnoe Slovo, Uzbek parliament-owned newspaper, has started publications of “ordinary people’s” messages on how the President inspired them to do more for their country. So, the first author of a letter, titled “Inspired for Wew Achievements,” is Olim Julliev, head of the Surkhandarya regional hydro-meliorative expedition, praises the Presidential efforts in the field of the development of the meliorative system, in cotton fields in particular. These efforts resulted in fertility of the Uzbek soil that gave 3,5 million tonnes of cotton this year.
Basically, the article highlights the wisdom of the President; how smart he was and still is in making right decisions that help develop the cotton industry for this whole time since 1991. As if no one else in the entire world could have ever thought about this with so much passion and devotion. Read the full story »
Editor’s note: US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton visited Uzbekistan and Tajikistan this past weekend. High on her agenda was the problematic issue of press freedom and human rights in the two countries. neweurasia’s Tomyris, however, wonders what may have been said — or not said — behind closed doors.
US Secretary of State, Hillary Rodham Clinton, made her way to and through Central Asia this past weekend – stopping in Tajikistan and Uzbekistan – on October 22nd and 23rd.
Here’s a summary of Clinton’s agenda: In Tajikistan, she met with President Emomali Rahmon and Foreign Minister Hamrokhon Zarifi to discuss bilateral and regional issues. She also met with locals, to – quite democratically – hear the voices of the people. And in Uzbekistan, Clinton met with President Islam Karimov and Foreign Minister Elyor Ganiev. Cars and technology were on her mind in Tashkent – Clinton visited the new General Motors Powertrain plant where she spoke about the Technology Entrepreneurship Program and Techno-Prize Competition.
About Tajikistan, but also alluding to similar issues in Uzbekistan, Interfax-News reported:
“The United States is concerned by the state of the freedom of the press in Tajikistan…”
And thus there was much discussion about the importance of opening up the media landscape in both former Soviet counties.
Read the full story »
Criminals brought to justice.
This is an everyday tagline journalists write about when covering common-day societal happenings – and sometimes it’s a tagline that describes the injustice that swarms their own profession – particularly in Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan, today.
Killing a journalist is killing a civil servant. Killing a journalist not only kills the voice of a community, but also kills the news, the ambitious and trusted medium through which we learn about the news and the vehicle through which we learn about what goes on in society.
On October 11th, 3 men were sentenced for the murder of independent Kyrgyz opposition journalist Gennady Pavlyuk, in Kazakhstan. Pavlyuk, 51, died on December 22nd 2009 after being thrown – hands and feet bound – from the 6th floor of a building in the “Apple” city of Almaty. And 2 years later, an answer to the puzzle has finally been instituted.
A week and a half away from Election Day and one of the front runners in the act of international campaigning is, and has been, banned from participating – the media. How can elections be called free and fair if the media is bound? They can’t – and especially not in Kyrgyzstan these days.
Back in August neweurasia noted that in the following the country’s October 2011 elections, 11 online medias were denied accreditation during the campaigning, while traditional medias were indeed approved. The reason: according to Kyrgyz Law, web-based new agencies are not recognized as legitimate media outlets. To read more into the story, check out: “Internet barred from covering Kyrgyzstan’s electoral campaigns”.
Online media aside – officials have been attacking traditional media, too. Radio shows have been interrupted, TV programs jammed – and so on. From BBC and CNN to Euronews, K+, Russia’s RBK, Rossiya-24, Russia’s Channel One and beyond – international media has fallen victim to a Kyrgyz national media-misdemeanor.
Read the full story »
Editor’s note: Good news — sort of. Muhammad Yusuf Ismailov and Urunboy Usmonov have been found guilty, but with very commuted sentences. neweurasia’s Alpharabius reports. “The international community has succeeded in bringing sufficient pressure onto the situation to make the Tajik authorities rectify themselves,” he writes, “[But] in the end, this two-faced/face-saving sentencing just demonstrates further the weakness of the Tajik justice system.”
Two different trials against Tajik journalists Muhammad Yusuf Ismailov and Urunboy Usmonov have resulted in strikingly similar sentences: both were found guilty, but not to the extent that the prosecutors had wanted. The result? The Nuri Zindagi correspondent, Ismailov, was fined 35,000 somoni (~7,200 USD), and the BBC reporter, Usmonov, was formally sentenced to three years in prison, only to have that immediately commuted by the recent amnesty.
To review, Ismailov was accused of slander and blackmail, punishable up to 16 years in prison, while Usmonov was accused of religious extremism faced up to five years. Prosecutors frequently failed to provide evidence sufficient or proportional to their desired indictments, and chargers were dropped literally one after another during trials. Ismailov was charged of inciting ethnic tensions, but the prosecutors could neither define the term nor provide evidence; the accusation of slander was similarly weak. without clear endorsement. The only allegation that stuck in any sense was that of insulting officials, as the State Language Committee was of the opinion that the tone of his articles were derisive. Nevertheless, this same Committee — which is by no means independent, by the way — said that he did not deserve such a steep sentence, and anyway, the constitution protects freedom of speech. Meanwhile, Usmonov originally was accused of being a member of the banned Hizb-ut-Tahrir movement, whose own members denied this. The prosecutors ultimately attempted to charge him for failing to inform authorities about the movement, but in fact, according to Tajik law a journalist has the right to keep his sources anonymous.
The Tajik National Association of Independent Media (NANSMIT) deemed Ismailov’s trial an act of “political revenge” launched by the local authorities who were the subject of criticism in his articles. The accusation against Usmonov was just gibberish in the eyes of everyone who knows him well. The Committee to protect Journalists (CPJ) has said,
“Both journalists are being punished for nothing other than their independent reporting on issues of public interest. Usmonov is charged with extremism, while Ismoilov faces defamation, insult and extortion charges. All charges have been fabricated, CPJ research shows.”
The international community has succeeded in bringing sufficient pressure onto the situation to make the Tajik authorities rectify themselves. Besides the CPJ and NewEurasia, there was of course RFE/RL and VOA, the BBC added its noteworthy might to Usmonov’s cause in particular, and the OSCE representative on freedom of press, Dunya Miyatovic, openly accused Tajik authorities of not responding to her letters about the cases. Supporters also formed groups on Facebook defending the reporters.
How should we assess the sentences? On the one hand, the Tajik authorities clearly realised that they were going to be in for a public relations whipping had they decided to push forward with the harsher sentences, and they calculated that they were not up for suffering the lashes. On the other hand, they needed to save face to their own power-bases. The journalists already suffered trial, and even if their sentences have been reduced, their reputations have been harmed among many of the Tajik readership who simply don’t know the subtleties of the cases. So, in the end, this two-faced/face-saving sentencing just demonstrates further the weakness of the Tajik justice system.
Incidentally, there’s a call from among some of my colleagues that Ismailov and Usmonov should launch lawsuits against their accusers. If this happens, the tables could very well turn, and perhaps the Tajik justice will finally muster the courage to exert its independence and bring about real rule of law in the country…
Translator’s Note: Originally written by neweurasia’s Nuraika (RUS)
TEDxBishkek. As we had previously announced, last Saturday was the day of TEDxBishkek – the first event of this kind and scale in Bishkek. The actual event took place at Vefa Center last Saturday, but its pre-inception spirit had already been hovering around by Friday. The opening ceremony was held in «Цех», the creative, colorful, a bit crazy atmosphere of which is especially appealing to similar occasions.
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