Central Asia Meeting on Journalism in Internet Age

An IWPR round table on the issues facing online journalism in Central Asia has facilitated dialogue between civil society and the authorities.

The meeting in Bishkek on November 24 brought together media experts, officials, members of parliament, civil society activists and representatives of international organisations.

The aim was to produce recommendations to governments, civil society and the media community to make use of the internet more effective.

IWPR invited officials to take recommendations from round table participants and put them to the government decision makers.

The event received extensive coverage in Central Asia media, particularly a speech to the round table made by a member of the Kyrgyz parliament from the ruling Ak Jol party, Alisher Sabirov.

Sabirov, who formerly wanted Kyrgyzstan to adopt restrictive internet legislation similar to that in Kazakstan, said that following consultations with Kyrgyz media representatives, it was decided not to introduce a new law. Instead, the Kyrgyz parliament decided to amend existing legislation in areas like stopping pornography and preventing incitement to violence. 

"When information about human rights violations is promptly published, government bodies do react to it."
Abdumomun Mamaraimov, chairman of the public fund Voice of Freedom

Sabirov said Kyrgyzstan is a leading user of the internet in Central Asia and adopting a particular law would hinder its development.

This decision was taken before the IWPR meeting but thanks to the extensive coverage the meeting received in the regional press, it reached a much wider public.

Another speaker, the head of information department of the Tajik foreign ministry, Davlat Nazriev, told participants that the IWPR meeting would contribute to the debate in Tajikistan, which does not have an internet law.

Participants noted that in its 2009 Press Freedom Index, the Paris-based watchdog Reporters Without Borders ranked Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan 160th and 173rd, respectively, out of 173. Kazakstan at 142 and Kyrgyzstan at 125 also scored poorly, while Tajikistan performed best of the five Central Asian states at 113. 

Particularly bad was the performance of Kazakstan, which slipped 17 points compared to the 2008 listing because of its draconian internet law - although it has one of the region’s highest rates of internet usage of around 15 per cent. Anton Morozov from the Kazak Institute for Strategic Studies said reduced prices by internet service provider Kazaktelecom had led to an eight-fold increase in subscribers.

Another topic of the round table was whether human rights defenders are able to make the most of the internet in their work. There was a widely shared view that civil society is not benefiting due to a low level of internet skills and strict control.

Sardar Bagishbekov, from IWPR Kyrgyzstan, said that rights defenders are not benefiting from social networking sites such Twitter and from blogging.

However Abdumomun Mamaraimov, chairman of the public fund Voice of Freedom, and also editor of the bulletin Rights for Everyone, said that officials from the prosecutor’s office, the interior ministry and the national security service are regular readers of his website.

“When information about human rights violations is promptly published, government bodies do react to it,” he said. 

Meanwhile, an IWPR report on analysts’ fears of renewed attacks by exiled militant group the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, IMU, has been welcomed for the light it shed on an area that is difficult to report.

"Report will be noticed by certain circles among security service personnel and taken into account when they compile their analytical reports and make conclusions."

For its special report Is Uzbek Guerrilla Force Planning Homecoming?, published in November, IWPR interviewed leading security and religious experts about the security threat posed by the group.

Experts agreed that last year’s sporadic outbreaks of violence in Uzbekistan and Tajikistan made renewed insurgent activity possible. But they said that this would not be on a scale that Central Asian governments could not handle, and that the IMU lacked a substantial following.

The article followed reports that the organisation had regrouped in northern Afghanistan close to the border with Tajikistan. That sparked fears that the IMU could mount a repeat of incursions it launched in Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan a decade ago. 

Information that the IMU was re-grouping came after reports that its leader Tohir Yoldash had been wounded in a United States rocket attack on August 27 and died shortly afterwards.

Readers said IWPR’s special report contributed to a better understanding of the IMU development.

Hurshed Niyozov, the editor of the Tajik newspaper Faraj, told IWPR, “The majority of the information published by journalists working for local media on such events are just news stories mostly citing statistics and that’s it.”

A former Kyrgyz security officer who withheld his name said this type of report could be useful for security experts.

The officer said the report will be “noticed by certain circles among security service personnel and taken into account when they compile their analytical reports and make conclusions”.