EU wants to forget Andijan crackdown but journalists still targeted by police paranoia

In the latest example of official paranoia and harassment of the press, Tashkent-based freelance journalists Vasiliy Markov and Sid Yanyshev were interrogated by police and members of the secret services about their work for more than 10 hours during a recent visit to the eastern border region near the city of Andijan. “The European Union has just lifted the last of its remaining sanctions on the Uzbek government, but this episode shows that there has been no liberalisation and that Uzbek society is still subject to arbitrary and dictatorial rule,” Reporters Without Borders said. The two journalists had gone to an area near Andijan to do a report about the difficulties for residents to cross the Kyrgyz border. Just as they were about to begin the return journey to Tashkent, a customs officer stopped them when he saw Yanyshev take a photo from their taxi. After an initial interrogation, he took them to the border post’s commander. They were searched there, their mobile phones were confiscated and they were questioned again about their presence in the region. A few hours later, they were interrogated again by two members of the SNB (the former KGB) who had been sent specially from Andijan. The two SNB officers discovered the audio cassettes on which they had recorded interviews. In one of the interviews, a local human rights activist talked about the 2005 rioting in Andijan and this year’s rioting in Khanabad. This made the SNB officers even more suspicious and the two journalists were transferred to the main police station in the town of Karasu. After waiting several hours in the police station’s internal courtyard, they were questioned yet again by the deputy station chief and another SNB officer. They were finally released and their camera and tape-recorder were returned. But the police held on to the audio cassettes. After returning to Tashkent, the two journalists were not arrested or questioned again and the incident seemed to be over. Yanyshev wrote a careful article in which he described the situation in Andijan as calm. Nonetheless, well-informed sources told him the SNB was determined to ask the prosecutor’s office to investigate him on suspicion of “preparing and disseminating material containing a threat to security and public order” under article 244-1 of the criminal code. The same sources said the secret services also had Markov in their sights. This is not the first time that Markov has been directly threatened. On 9 July of this year he was given a beating by two men who accosted him in the street and told him: “It is not nice to write for suspect websites. You should just write for (the official newspapers) Uzbekistan Today and Narodnoe Slovo.” As this took place in an area of Tashkent that he does not normally visit, he deduced that he had been followed or located by means of his mobile phone. The EU imposed sanctions on Uzbekistan in October 2005 after Tashkent refused to let an international commission investigate the bloody crackdown on an uprising in Andijan the previous May. In an indiscriminate and disproportionate use of force, the police opened fire on a crowd, killing hundreds of people (although the official figure was only 188 dead). At the same time, a complete news blackout was imposed on the local and foreign press in Uzbekistan. The sanctions included a ban on visas for 12 senior Uzbek officials, an embargo on arms sales and the partial suspension of a partnership and cooperation accord between the EU and Uzbekistan. The EU began gradually lifting the sanctions in November 2006 and announced the end of the arms embargo yesterday – a move criticised in a release issued jointly by Reporters Without Borders, Human Rights Watch and International Crisis Group. Ten journalists are currently in prison in Uzbekistan. They include Dilmurod Sayid, who was given a 12-year sentence last month, and Solidjon Abdurakhamanov, who received a 10-year sentence in June. Find more independent news about Uzbekistan on uznews.net (Photo AFP)