Central Asia: Oct/Nov ‘09

Long-term IWPR contributor Asyl Osmonalieva has been awarded a prize of 1,500 US dollars for seven articles on issues debated in parliament.

The competition was organised by the Kyrgyz parliament with the support of the European Commission-United Nations Development Programme Parliamentary Reform Project. The results were announced on November 4, which is celebrated in Kyrgyzstan as the Day of Information and Media. The competition was open to print and electronic media outlets as well as to individual journalists.

According to Asyl, her prize came as something of a surprise, “I have to admit that there was a lot of criticism in the reports so it was a bit unexpected to find that in the end my publications were named as the best.”

The prize comes after Asyl’s nomination as a finalist in the Developing Asia Journalism Awards - run by the Asian Development Bank Institute - for an article she wrote for IWPR entitled Kyrgyzstan’s Controversial ‘Winter Sale’, published in January 2009. In October, Asyl travelled to Tokyo for a training programme on economic, financial and environmental reporting as part of the award.

Talking about her analytical reports on the inner working of parliament, Asyl said, “The decision to take part in the competition came at the last minute; I submitted seven reports just before the deadline.”

Two of these items were written for IWPR. One of them, Disappointment at Kyrgyz Media Law Changes, looked into amendments to the media legislation approved by parliament. These required television stations to ensure that not less than 50 per cent of their overall output was in the Kyrgyz language. They also had to produce 50 per cent of their content themselves and reduce the amount of programming bought in, mostly from Russian TV. The bill promptly came in for public criticism.

“We did everything possible to give even-handed and balanced information and provide an opportunity those involved to state their position,” Asyl said.

Another IWPR article, Kyrgyzstan: Yet Another Tax Amnesty, was about an effort to get people to declare assets on which taxes had not been paid. The controversial bill brought a strong reaction from the public and some deputies. Asyl said that by focusing on the heart of the controversy, the report depicted the difficult political dispute that lay behind this law.

It was not the first time that Asyl had focused on the work of the parliament. Prior to that, she published a series of articles on transparency in the Kyrgyz parliament written with a grant from Internews. It was a success and her articles were republished in Kyrgyzstan and in Russia.

Asyl continues to write about parliament and her aim is to show not only discussions themselves but also events behind the scenes.

“I want to show parliament from various angles - how do big and small factions work in the parliament, what are the rules for their engagement? How do [deputies] act in response to the public reaction? What do civil society, experts, the community and ordinary voters think about the quality of adopted laws? It all seemed important and interesting to me,” she said.

While working on her reports, Asyl found out that it pays off to go for topics that are undiscovered.

“For example, [I wanted] to raise the issue about discreet lobbying for various bills,” Asyl said, adding that not many journalists write about this subject, possibly out of fear that it would be difficult to get interviews.

“But in reality it turned out that even deputies themselves are ready to talk and discuss it.”

She remembers the words of the deputy from the Communist party Nikolai Bailo, who praised her saying, “You have chosen a very good topic.”

In another development, IWPR Bishkek radio editor Kaarmanbek Kuluev was one of the winners of a video competition highlighting civil society in action that was run by the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe, OSCE.

It was launched to mark the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall and the Iron Curtain.

Kaarmanbek’s video Don Quixote of Bishkek tells the story of rights activist Maxim Kuleshov, who heads a group of young people united in a pressure group called Movement 25. The group protests against the policies of the Kyrgyz authorities in restricting public protests.

Along with five other winners from post-communist countries, Kaarmanbek received a trip to Vienna to the OSCE in November.

“Maxim Kuleshov, the subject of my video, was one of the most visible human right activists. He used to come up with different protests where he would mostly act alone. Some people called him a freak, a clown. Others saw him as a great idealist. I just tried to depict both sides at the same time and show pictures of what he really does. It was just a report about the person, a story that I found interesting to tell,” he said.