Attacks on Kyrgyz journalists threaten press freedom

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BISHKEK-- “I was riding in a taxi at night when we were stopped by the traffic police on one of the streets of Osh. They asked us to step out of the vehicle and said that the cab driver smelled like alcohol. We got into an argument about it”.

“In the heat of the argument, several people came up to me and forced me aside. The next morning found me in the local hospital with moderate traumas.”

Kubanychbek Dzholdoshev is a journalist with 10 years of experience working for TV companies in Bishkek and Osh. The father of two is one of a growing number of journalists who have been attacked in the past two years.

“I was surprised that the officers didn’t do anything. I didn’t see them, but they should have heard that something was going on. Also, in a couple of days after the incident, the chief editor of the newspaper I work for found a letter in his office addressed to me containing threats and a machine gun bullet”, Dzholdoshev said.

Despite the increase in attacks, government Ombudsman Tursunbek Akun, believes that not every one of the two dozen attacks on the journalists is connected with their professional activity.

“Of course, there are several incidents supported by the proven facts. But there were also incidents – and even the victims themselves admitted it – when the reason was simple hooliganism”, Akun told Central Asia Online.

Nina Ognianova, Coordinator of the Committee to Protect Journalists in Europe and Central Asia, said, “Recently, the situation with the news media has worsened in the country. Journalists are being threatened and beaten up. This situation is leading to self-censorship of the media, or all the critical journalists will leave the country”.

The attacks have been the subject of several seminars involving human rights advocates and mass media representatives. The most recent was in connection with the killing of Kyrgyz journalist, Gennady Pavlyuk.

On December 16, Pavlyuk was found unconscious in Almaty. A Kazakhstan Ministry of Internal Affairs Press Service representative, who asked to remain anonymous, told Central Asia Online the journalist “was tied up and thrown out of a sixth floor window”. Pavlyuk died December 22 after six days in a coma.

The commercial Kazakh television station KTK reported December 30, that sources in the Kazakh “power structures” said three agents of Kyrgyz state security met with Pavlyuk in the apartment from which he was thrown to his death.

The Kazakh source said Kyrgyz officials have been passive to requests for assistance, KTK reported. However a spokesman for the Kyrgyz Ministry of Internal Affairs said that the Kazakh Ministry of Internal Affairs has not made an official request for help in the investigation.

Kyrgyz journalists are not the only ones being beaten in Bishkek. On December 15, Russian journalist Alexander Evgrafov, a reporter for BaltInfo in Kyrgyzstan, said he was approached by two men in police uniforms who beat him when he refused to get into a car with them.

Opposition deputies have expressed their regret about the lack of any meaningful reaction by Kyrgyz President Kurmanbek Bakiyev and the government.

“Everyone concerned by this problem prefers to exchange press releases and official letters”, said Irina Karamushkina, a Zhogorku Kenesh parliamentary deputy from the Social Democratic Party of Kyrgyzstan. “If anything is said at all, it is said in generalities and is very vague. The attacks have become more frequent, they follow one another, and each one is more frightening than the one before”.

The President’s Secretariat has published an official press release expressing “profound concern” and emphasizing “the need for the resolute actions to prevent such incidents”.

In the meantime, the Ministry of Home Affairs notified the press that it has stopped investigating the spring 2009 attack on Syrgak Abdyldaev, political columnist for the Reporter Bishkek newspaper and a member of the Ata-Meken (Fatherland) Opposition Party.