Official statistics indicate that around 700,000 people in Uzbekistan use the Internet, less than three per cent of a population of 26 million. Independent sources estimate that it has even fewer regular users. Access to sites with an oppositional or even just a critical slant is blocked by service providers on instructions from the authorities.
Despite this, the popularity of the Internet as an unofficial source of information is growing. Often ordinary citizens – people who don’t know how to use a computer, the people buying and selling in the bazaars, taxi-drivers — pass on news that someone has picked up on the Internet.
Uzbekistan’s new constitution abolished censorship of the mass media back in 1992. In spite of this, an “official secrets consultant” is to be found in every newspaper and magazine editorial office; and the Press and Information Agency has a special section for investigating leaks of official information. Ninety per cent of the newspapers, magazines, radio and TV channels are financed from the state budget; all of them are forced to engage in self-censorship, keeping quiet about problems and creating an artificial image of a flourishing Uzbekistan — the so-called “Karimov Paradise”.
For people in Uzbekistan, the Internet is beginning to play the role Western radio stations did for citizens of the USSR living behind the Iron Curtain. By comparison with the lacklustre local newspapers, Internet publications offer their Uzbek readers an unimaginable freedom of expression.
In March, and again in April 2004, Tashkent was hit by a series of suicide bombs. Until the evening of 29 March the authorities were totally silent, along with practically the entire Uzbek media; representatives of Western news agencies and TV channels were prevented from doing their job since the sole, government-controlled, television transmitter was, they were told, out of order. Simultaneous problems affected the telephone network; ringing into or out of Tashkent proved far from simple.
But by 9:15 am on 29 March, the first reports of clashes with the police and of the bomb explosion near Chorsu Market were on the Internet. The number of Internet hits on sites about Uzbekistan increased threefold. The very word “Internet” became synonymous with civil resistance to the regime, parallel to the role of the political opposition. Reports were printed out by enthusiasts for distribution to friends and acquaintances.
During the April 2004 events, the website fergana.ru received more than 1,000 e-mail reports and instant messages with eye-witness accounts of what was happening in Tashkent and the provinces. Many of these were published in full, enraging the authorities, who were unprepared for this “information explosion”.
While the state-controlled media were publishing with a delay of several days, and then producing only brief official statements that concentrated on taking issue with foreign radio and television stations — an article in the government newspaper Halk suzi likened correspondents of the independent and foreign press to ‘international terrorists’ and public enemies — the number of local visitors on the fergana.ru website rose to 3,000 per day; for the foreign media, it was a vital source.
Of the Internet publications whose editors are resident inside Uzbekistan, www.freeuz.org, run by the Committee for Freedom of Speech and Expression, and www.tribune-uz.info, an independent publication created with the support of the local section of the Soros Open Society Institute are the most significant.
Speaking on 26 June, Uzbekistan’s official “Day of the Press”, President Islam Karimov spoke of a mass media facing “extremely demanding tasks”, chief among them the need to “protect the true interests of the people”. This, he said, “consists of rebutting the information attacks against our country, exposing for all to see certain foreign and home-grown loudmouths”.
The leaders of the mass media meekly followed Karimov’s policy more zealously than ever in the run-up to the December 2004 parliamentary elections. Today journalists and media of Uzbekistan are forbidden not only to provide a platform for the views of leaders of the opposition, but even to mention the existence of an opposition. Other topics on the banned list include:
presidential decrees or government directives;
the closure in spring 2004 of the Tashkent office of the Soros Foundation;
the freezing of bank accounts of non-governmental organisations;
the refusal of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development to continue working with the regime;
the economic, social and political reasons for the growth of Islamic fundamentalism and religious extremism;
comparison of the economic and social situation in Uzbekistan with that of its neighbours in Central Asia;
the persecution of dissidents or torture in prisons;
the foreign policy of the USA, a strategic partner of Uzbekistan;
poverty, unemployment, forced labour migration, the slave labour of under-aged children on the cotton plantations, domestic violence or self-immolation of women;
the cost of consumer goods, the business climate in the country, fiscal or excise policy, the commodity price of cotton;
the national mentality, make any critical comments about folk traditions, or express opinions about the history of Uzbekistan that in any way deviate from official ideology.
Needless to say, this is all grist to the Internet. As Craig Murray, former UK ambassador to Uzbekistan on said: “In my opinion there is no other country where the media operates under so stiff a censorship. I´d even say that there is no press in Uzbekistan at all and that local journalists are but wasting their time. Why are you writing it all down? You cannot report it. Perhaps, only on the Internet …I´m not saying that Uzbek journalists are inadequate or inept. They are not given a chance to be adequate and professional. They are afraid.”
Meanwhile, the Internet experience has forced the government to rethink its own media policies: its response to the terrorist attacks of 30 July 2004 was broadcast on state television within 24 hours. Nor does it attempt to block all access to the websites of fergana.ru or centrasia.ru at times of domestic crisis.
The Internet providers, under the authorities´ thumb, delay or block access only to particular ‘hot’ publications such as freeuz.org and tribune-uz.info sites which are totally blocked in Uzbekistan, as is the opposition´s website at erkinurt.org and other sites operated by opposition parties and civil rights organisations.
The popularity of the independent Internet-based mass media in Uzbekistan as an alternative source of information continues to grow. The World Wide Web is in robust good health in Uzbekistan and continues to provide information that other parts of the media cannot do.
