72 results arranged by date
Increased international aid and the presence of U.S. troops using Uzbekistan as a base for the “war on terror” have focused new international attention on the country, forcing President Islam Karimov to pay lip service to press freedom. “Today, there are no boundaries to the flow of information, and any attempts to restrict freedom of…
There were 138 journalists in prison around the world at the end of 2003 who were jailed for practicing their profession. The number is the same as last year. An analysis of the reasons behind this is contained in the introduction on page 10. At the beginning of 2004, CPJ sent letters of inquiry to…
New York, September 26, 2003—At a closed hearing yesterday, the City Court in Uzbekistan’s capital, Tashkent, rejected an appeal by jailed journalist and human rights activist Ruslan Sharipov to have his conviction and prison sentence overturned, according to local and international press reports. Instead, the court dropped one of the three charges against Sharipov and…
New York, September 11, 2003—The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has learned that Ruslan Sharipov, a jailed Uzbek journalist and human rights activist, issued a statement from prison on September 5 reporting that he pled guilty to one charge in his August trial because authorities had forced him to do so by torturing him. In…
Your Excellency: The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) believes that the arrest, conviction, and imprisonment of journalist and human rights activist Ruslan Sharipov are part of a politically motivated campaign to suppress press freedom in Uzbekistan.
While some governments in Central Asia and Eastern Europe are taking small steps forward regarding the media, 2002 was another dismal year for press freedom in much of the region. In some countries, a growing concern about Western public opinion resulted in a shift from blatant attacks to more subtle, covert tactics to control national…
Increased international aid and the presence of U.S. troops who use Uzbekistan as a base for the “war on terror” inspired President Islam Karimov to pay lip service to press freedom. With much fanfare, Karimov’s government ended prior censorship of newspapers–one of the few systems in the world that required papers to submit copy to…
New York, March 10, 2003—Two Uzbek journalists working for U.S. governmentfunded radio stations were attacked by a group of men on Friday, March 7, while trying to cover an anti-government protest in Uzbekistan’s capital, Tashkent. According to local and international press reports, Khusnutddin Kutbiddinov, of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), and Yusuf Rasulov, with Voice…
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…
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,…