Published on 1 June 2009
4 February 2010 - Photographer who showed Uzbek reality to be tried for “insulting the people”
23 January 2010 - Popular radio host arrested on religious extremism charge
8 January 2010 - Interrogation of journalists raises concerns about new crackdown on press
President Karimov likes to call foreign journalists “agitators,” even “terrorists,” and has done his best to make it impossible for foreign media to operate in the country since 2005. But most of his media victims since he came to power in 1989 have been local journalists. He has been particularly ruthless in his efforts to crush all opposition and eliminate the independent press since a revolt in the eastern city of Andijan in May 2005.
He has the brutal habits of a former Soviet functionary and his victims, including critical journalists, either disappear, or are confined to mental hospitals or are arbitrarily thrown in prison. He said in 1999 he was “prepared to blow off the heads of 200 people, to sacrifice their lives, in order to preserve peace and tranquillity.”
During his campaign for reelection in December 2007, Karimov was ubiquitous in the state media, which credited him with all the country’s “successes.” Independently reported news remains a rare commodity and the price is sometimes high. The last independent journalist operating in the western region of Karakalpakstan was sentenced to ten years in prison on 19 November 2008, while state TV stations wage hate campaigns against Radio Free Europe’s correspondents, naming them, calling them traitors, showing their photos and even giving the addresses of the schools their children attend.
He is the editor of Erk, the last opposition newspaper in Uzbekistan until it was banned by the authorities in 1993, and he was jailed on 18 August 1999 in the wave of repression after the failed assassination attempt on President Islam Karimov in Tashkent on 16 February 1999.
