Kazakhstan / Europe & Central Asia

New York, July 16, 2002—In the latest instance of Kazakhstan’s official harassment of independent and opposition journalists, a prominent journalist has been charged with defaming Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev. Sergei Duvanov, who writes for several Web sites financed by Kazakhstan’s political opposition, was summoned to the Almaty office of the National Security Committee (KNB, successor…

New York, May 22, 2002—This morning assailants threw Molotov cocktails into the office windows of Delovoye Obozreniye Respublika, an opposition newspaper based in the city of Almaty in southern Kazakhstan. In a separate incident, two employees of another opposition paper were attacked yesterday. According to international reports and CPJ sources in Kazakhstan, no one was…

The exhilarating prospect of broad press freedoms that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union a decade ago has faded dramatically in much of the post-communist world. A considerable decline in press freedom conditions in Russia during the last year, along with the stranglehold authoritarian leaders have imposed on media in Central Asia, the Caucasus,…

On May 3–World Press Freedom Day–President Nursultan Nazarbayev approved restrictive amendments to Kazakhstan’s already burdensome Mass Media Law. Under the law, organizations designated as members of the “mass media” are subject to a host of harsh provisions. But Nazarbayev’s amendment widened the legal net by designating Web sites as “mass media” as well. This change…

New York, July 19, 2001–A CPJ representative testified before a joint congressional subcommittee yesterday about the terrible state of press freedom in Central Asia. [Read the transcript] “Repression and violence, or the threat thereof, are ever present for many reporters, encouraging self-censorship as a survival mechanism,” CPJ Washington representative Frank Smyth told the joint hearing…

Uzbekistan has one of the strictest censorship regimes in the world, as the author learned when she launched her journalism career in Tashkent.

Your Excellency, The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) welcomes the recent decision of the Almaty prosecutor’s office to drop criminal defamation charges against Bigeldy Gabdullin, editor of the opposition weekly XXI Vek. However, we remain deeply concerned about your government’s frequent use of politically-motivated criminal charges to harass opposition journalists.

POLITICAL REFORMS AND ECONOMIC GROWTH, along with the advent of democratic governments in Croatia and Serbia, brightened the security prospects for journalists in Central Europe and the Balkans. In contrast, Russian’s new government imposed press restrictions, and authoritarian regimes entrenched themselves in other countries of the former Soviet Union, particularly in Central Asia, further threatening…

In North Korea, listening to a foreign broadcast is a crime punishable by death. In Colombia, right-wing paramilitary forces are suspected in the murders of three journalists in 2000. Meanwhile, paramilitary leader Carlos Castaño was formally charged with the 1999 murder of political satirist Jaime Garzón.

IN AN APRIL 19 SPEECH, PRESIDENT NURSULTAN NAZARBAYEV called for increased state oversight of the press-even though his decade in power was already marked by rigid control of independent expression. The National Security Committee (KNB, successor to the KGB) regularly harassed independent and opposition media last year. Journalists also faced countless defamation lawsuits filed by…