Recently, I found out that president of Uzbekistan Islam Karimov made some amendments to the Law of the Republic of Uzbekistan on Mass Media. The law is written really well. Unfortunately, online version of the amended law (rus) doesn’t keep track of any changes that were made. This and the fact that I couldn’t find the old version of the law to compare made it impossible to see what was really changed. Anyway, I can surely say that the new draft of the law is really promising, as it clearly states that mass media in Uzbekistan is independent of the government. A person, who has never been in Uzbekistan and who doesn’t know the real situation there, would say that it is a perfect law on mass media that can be ever developed. Alas, the real situation in Uzbekistan leaves much to be desired. Uzbekistan has won a reputation of a country that contradicts to its own laws proving itself to be a great hypocrite. This new draft of the law on mass media again demonstrates it. As it is in Russian, I just translated the Article 7 on the Censorship Inadmissibility, but I think it will be more than enough to prove my point.

Article 7. Censorship Inadmissibility
In the Republic of Uzbekistan censorship on mass media is not admissible. Nobody has a right to demand preliminary approval of the publishing materials, as well as to change the content or fully removal of it from publication (broadcasting).

De facto, Uzbek authorities put really severe censorship on mass media. Let’s take internet. Internet is one of the less dependent and controlled media, where information disperses really fast. Using different pretexts, e.g. struggle against terrorism and for national security, government is trying to put censorship in the internet. According to the survey of Reporters without Borders in 2004, Uzbekistan was found as the 7th country in the world for harsh censorship in the internet.

By the way, like many other independent websites and weblogs, Neweurasia.net is blocked in the territory of Uzbekistan.