Kyrgyzstan: Concern as Western Broadcasts Pulled Off Air

The Kyrgyz authorities have come under pressure both at home and abroad for taking Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, RFE/RL, off the air and suspending local transmissions by the BBC.

While the BBC is back on air and talks are under way on RFE/RL, some commentators say the decision to stop the National Radio and Television Corporation of Kyrgyzstan, NTRK, rebroadcasting western programmes is an attempt to curb the flow of information at a time when Kyrgyzstan faces a worsening economic situation.

The national broadcaster, meanwhile, insists the suspensions were forced by contractual disagreements, although it also expressed concerns about RFE/RL’s objectivity. A spokesman for President Kurmanbek Bakiev, meanwhile, said the administration did not want to get involved in the dispute.

RFE/RL’s Kyrgyz-language radio service, known as Radio Azattyk, as well as two television programmes – the current-affairs show Inconvenient Questions and the youth show Azattyk Plus – were taken off NTRK’s radio and TV outlets in early October, although the suspension was only acknowledged two months later.

Rebroadcasts of the BBC World Service Kyrgyz and Russian programmes were also taken off NTRK radio on December 1.

In an interview for the AP news agency on December 9, NTRK chairman Melis Eshimkanov said RFE/RL owed his company 50,000 US dollars in rebroadcasting fees.

However, he also said there were objections to the content of Azattyk’s programmes, saying, “I don’t think their journalists have fulfilled their obligations under the agreement, which says that the TV programmes are to be prepared jointly [with NTRK]. The management of NTRK needs to know what the topic of programmes is, who the participants are and what the format will be.”

Referring to the Inconvenient Questions TV show, he said, “Their programmes did not have balance. Eighty per cent of them were advertisements for the opposition and only 20 per cent was information about the authorities.”

Eshimkanov elaborated in remarks at a meeting with RFE/RL executives on December 15, saying Azattyk’s output was “too negative and critical”, and asking for the right to vet programmes before they go out.

The NTRK chief took a softer line in an interview in which he and Azattyk director Tynchtybek Chorotegin both participated. In the interview, published on the BBC Kyrgyz Service’s website on December 18, Eshimkanov made it clear that NTRK wanted to know the content of programmes in advance, but not to listen to them.

He said that after a new law on TV and radio was passed in June making broadcasting companies answerable for all their content, he had asked RFE/RL to agree to a contractual change under which it would assume responsibility for any defamatory statements. He said RFE/RL refused to accept these terms.

For his part, Chorotegin insisted that Azattyk sought to maintain balance in its output.

“Each of our programmes has to have a representative of the government or a minister present,” he said. “If senior officials don’t have the time, we invite people who support the authorities’ position.”

In the case of the BBC, NTRK took a somewhat different position. In the AP interview, Eshimkanov confined his complaints to contractual matters.

“They undertook to set up four transmitters across the country, but they have set up only two in the south,” he said. “I regarded this as a violation of the contract.”

He also said the BBC had not paid maintenance costs for the two transmitters that had been installed, so NTRC had spent around 300,000 US dollars on this over the last year.

“I think we need to resolve this issue too,” he said.

After negotiations took place, BBC transmissions resumed on December 10, on the second channel of NTRK radio rather than the first where they had been previously. From December 15, they were restored to the first channel.

Following the Soviet era in which the BBC and RFE/RL were only available on short wave, rebroadcasting on Kyrgyz FM waves nationwide has been crucial to building large audiences.

This reach, plus the fact that both broadcaster have programmes in Kyrgyz has made them popular in rural as well as urban areas. A recent survey indicated that four out of ten adults listen to Azattyk or watch its TV programmes at least once a week.

Following the RFE/RL delegation’s talks in Bishkek on December 15, Azattyk is expected to be restored soon.

In the meantime, the suspensions – however temporary – have led to numerous expressions of concerns about the state of media freedom, and democracy generally, in Kyrgyzstan – generally regarded as the most liberal of the five Central Asian states.

In a December 7 statement, RFE/RL president Jeffrey Gedmin said, "We expected more from a country trying to prove its reformist credentials in the region.”

In a letter to Kyrgyzstan foreign minister Ednan Karabayev, the OSCE’s Representative on Freedom of the Media, Miklos Haraszti, described the suspension of RFE/RL and BBC programmes as "drawback to the democratic changes that the government of the Kyrgyz Republic seeks to implement".

"Both RFE/RL and BBC are reputable public-service sources of information for Kyrgyz society. Their suspension would be a loss to pluralism, which is a major OSCE commitment in the media field," he said.

Human rights groups and opposition parties in Kyrgyzstan expressed fears that the government was trying to silence the few remaining sources of independent news.

On December 9, the Coalition for Democracy and Civil Society issued a statement “deep concern” at what it suggested was an attempt to stem the flow of information to people in rural areas, in particular.

The following day, the human rights organisation Interbilim said, “Press freedom in our country is being deliberately and steadily replaced by freedom of silence. Those newspapers, radio stations, journalists, publications and programmes unwise enough to voice criticism of the authorities are falling victim to this ‘democracy’.”

Opposition groups expressed similar concerns, with the Ak Shumkar party, for example, saying that “there are virtually no free media left in Kyrgyzstan”.

“Most citizens are now deprived of an opportunity to access objective, impartial information about current realities. Azattyk’s programmes are one of the few such sources,” it said.

Leading opposition politician Omurbek Tekebaev drew a parallel with the situation in 2004, when the government of President Askar Akaev blocked RFE/RL broadcasts. Akaev was ousted by a popular uprising in March 2005, and replaced by his opponents, one of whom, Kurmanbek Bakiev, became president.

“Now we see history repeating itself,” said Tekebaev. “That indicates that the leadership is fearful of public anger and is trying to protect itself.”

Over the course of 2008, the Kyrgyz government has been struggling to provide enough electricity. As winter arrives, the likelihood of continuing blackouts, accompanied by the mounting public discontent referred to by Tekebaev, is seen as a risk to the Bakiev administration.

BBC journalists, speaking on condition of anonymity, said they believed their programmes were pulled precisely because they were reporting on the energy crisis.

President Bakiev’s spokesman rejected any suggestion that the the administration had an interest in the Azattyk case. In a December 19 interview for IWPR, press secretary Nurlan Shakiev said, “This is exclusively a partnership agreement between NTRK and Azattyk, we, the presidential administration, are not going to intervene in it.

“As far as I know, under the contract NTRK and Azattyk have to make joint programmes, but Azattyk is not honouring that provision. Eshimkanov therefore raised some issues with them. There were in addition some financial and technical nature, so Eshimkanov’s stance is understandable.”

Anara Yusupova is the pseudonym of a journalist in Bishkek.