Press under deadly attack

Opinion: March 23, 2010 at 12:00a.m.

By Anara Yusupova

Institute for War & Peace Reporting

BISHKEK, Kyrgyzstan — A succession of newspaper closures and attacks on individual journalists is curbing press freedom in Kyrgyzstan, once regarded as the country with the most liberal media environment in Central Asia. A string of newspapers has been forced to shut down over the past several years, starting with the popular De Facto, whose editor, Cholpon Orozobekova, sought political asylum abroad in 2008.

The newspaper Achyk Sayasat folded in the summer of 2009, followed by Reporter Bishkek. Meanwhile, another paper, Uchur, is currently facing a libel suit and is teetering on the brink of closure.

The litany of attacks on individual reporters makes depressing reading. The non-government Institute of the Media Representatives says that in the last four years there have been 60 attacks on journalists in Kyrgyzstan.

Few of the major cases have been solved, including the death of Alisher Saipov, a prominent journalist killed in 2007.

There have been two deaths over the last 12 months. In December, Gennadiy Pavlyuk, a journalist from Kyrgyzstan, died in the Kazak city of Almaty. He was bound and thrown off a tall building.

Almaz Tashiev, a journalist in Nookat in southern Kyrgyzstan, died in July 2009, a week after being badly beaten. Eight police officers are alleged to have carried out the assault. On Feb. 25, a judge gave two of the officers charged with the assault two-year suspended sentences.

Conditions have deteriorated to such an extent that representatives from the U.S. embassy here and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe have urged local authorities to act.

Alexander Kulinsky, who heads the Media Complaints Commission, an independent self-regulation body for the profession, confirmed that many journalists were censoring themselves and avoiding difficult subject such as energy issues and Islamic religious terrorism.

Anara Yusupova is a reporter in Kyrgyzstan who writes for The Institute for War & Peace Reporting, a nonprofit organization in London that trains journalists in areas of conflict. Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.