Aleksei Volosevich

New York, June 18, 2010—We issued the following statement after police in the eastern Uzbek city of Andijan released independent Uzbek reporter Aleksei Volosevich after holding him without charge for three days; Volosevich was filming refugees from the unrest in Kyrgyzstan. Police confiscated his phone, footage, and audio recorder, Volosevich told CPJ.

New York, June 14, 2010—The Committee to Protect Journalists is disturbed by reports that local television stations in the southern Kyrgyz city of Osh were ordered to cease transmission on Friday by the city government in the wake of interethnic violence in the region. Osh residents now have access only to the state television channel, KTR, and several Russian television channels, the independent news agency Zpress reported.

New York, January 15, 2010—The Committee to Protect Journalists called on Uzbek authorities today to immediately cease their campaign of intimidation against the handful of independent journalists remaining in the Central Asian country. 

UZBEKISTAN

President Islam Karimov engaged in a full-fledged offensive against the independent press. Unrelenting government persecution drove out more than a dozen foreign correspondents and local reporters working for foreign media; continual harassment forced at least two news agencies and a media training organization to close their offices. Karimov and his allies used trumped-up charges of terrorism and extremism to jail media critics, political opponents, and human rights advocates. At least three journalists were imprisoned, and a number of others were detained for brief periods. Using police intimidation and a state-media smear campaign, the Karimov regime made clear that it would not tolerate any deviation from its official, sanitized version of events.

NOVEMBER 10, 2005
POSTED: December 2, 2005

Aleksei Volosevich, Ferghana.ru
ATTACKED

Five unidentified men attacked Volosevich, one of the few independent reporters still working in Uzbekistan who witnessed the Andijan massacre, near his apartment in the capital Tashkent. Volosevich, is a correspondent for the Moscow-based Central Asia news Web site Ferghana.ru.. He told CPJ the men knocked him to the ground, kicked him, and then doused him with paint which temporarily blinded him. Volosevich, 38, was not hospitalized.

New York, November 10, 2005—The Committee to Protect Journalists today condemned the assault of journalist Aleksei Volosevich, one of the few independent reporters still working in Uzbekistan who witnessed the Andijan massacre.

Volosevich, correspondent for the Moscow-based Central Asia news Web site Ferghana.ru, was attacked by five unidentified men near his apartment in the capital Tashkent on Wednesday. He told CPJ the men knocked him to the ground, kicked him, and then doused him with paint which temporarily blinded him. Volosevich, 38, was not hospitalized.