Uzbekistan
2002
CPJ URGES UZBEKISTAN TO FREE LOCAL PRESS
Tashkent, June 10, 2002—A delegation from the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) today completed a nine-day mission to Uzbekistan by calling on President Islam Karimov to free three jailed journalists and to change government policies that severely restrict press freedom in the country. In recent weeks, Uzbek officials formally abolished prior censorship. But local newspaper…
Attacks on the Press 2001: Introduction
IN THE WAKE of September 11, 2001, journalists around the world faced a press freedom crisis that was truly global in scope. In the first days and weeks after the terrorist attacks on New York City and Washington, D.C., governments across the globe–in China, Benin, the Palestinian Authority Territories, and the United States–took actions to…
Attacks on the Press 2001: Europe & Central Asia
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,…
Attacks on the Press 2001: Uzbekistan
Torture of political and religious dissidents remains commonplace under the brutal regime of President Islam Karimov. In February, writer Emin Usman died in detention, and the July death of imprisoned human rights activist Shovriq Rusimorodov confirmed the deteriorating political situation. Karimov has also cracked down on civil liberties by jailing thousands of Muslims under the…
Attacks on the Press 2001: Journalists in Prison
There were 118 journalists in prison around the world at the end of 2001 who were jailed for practicing their profession. The number is up significantly from the previous year, when 81 journalists were in jail, and represents a return to the level of 1998, when 118 were also imprisoned.
Journalist freed
New York, January 17, 2002—Shodi Mardiev, the Uzbek radio reporter who was sentenced in 1998 to an 11-year prison term for defamation and extortion, was released under an amnesty earlier this month, according to local and international sources. The journalist’s lawyer, Khakim Bobonorov, who met with Mardiev shortly after his release, told CPJ in a…