WELCOME TO IWPR'S REPORTING CENTRAL ASIA, No. 570 Part 3, March 25, 2009 KAZAKSTANS DISUNITED JOURNALISTS No space for trade unions in a profession where staff are deterred from any kind of collective action. By Natalya Napolskaya in Almaty
TAJIK PHONE FIRMS FIGHT CONTROL PLAN Opponents of plan to route all phone calls through one centre say it will be inefficient, expensive and intrusive. By Mukammal Odinaeva in Dushanbe **** NEW ************************************************************************************ KURT SCHORK AWARDS: 2009 CALL FOR ENTRIES http://iwpr.net/kurtschork09 BECOME A FAN OF IWPR ON FACEBOOK: http://iwpr.net/facebook **** IWPR RESOURCES ****************************************************************** CENTRAL ASIA RADIO: http://iwpr.net/centralasiaradio CENTRAL ASIA PROGRAMME HOME: http://iwpr.net/centralasia IWPR COMMENT: http://iwpr.net/comment SAHAR JOURNALISTS ASSISTANCE FUND: http://iwpr.net/sahar **** www.iwpr.net ******************************************************************** REPORTING CENTRAL ASIA RSS: http://www.iwpr.net/en/rca/rss.xml RECEIVE FROM IWPR: Readers are urged to subscribe to IWPR's full range of free electronic publications at: http://iwpr.net/subscribe GIVE TO IWPR: IWPR is wholly dependent upon grants and donations. For more information about how you can support IWPR go to: http://iwpr.net/donate **** www.iwpr.net ******************************************************************** KAZAKSTANS DISUNITED JOURNALISTS No space for trade unions in a profession where staff are deterred from any kind of collective action. By Natalya Napolskaya in Almaty Journalists in Kazakstan face obstacles created by their employers to discourage them from joining professional associations, and to stop them criticising the authorities, media professionals say. Eighty per cent of the newspapers and broadcasters in Kazakstan are in private hands, but this does not mean they are truly independent. Their owners regard maintaining good relations with the authorities as essential for their businesses to survive, and go to great lengths to keep them happy. They discourage critical reporting, and ban journalists from covering the political opposition. A journalist in the southern town of Taraz who gave his first name as Yerjan explained that it was important for media owners who generally have other business interests as well to cultivate contacts in local or national government if they want their businesses to remain trouble-free. I can understand our founder he has his own business, and he also has his own contact at the top who protects him, he said. Who is going to bite the hand that feeds him? said Yerjan. Like other journalists around the country, this man told IWPR of being warned away from getting involved in professional associations. Our contracts do not allow us to join any public organisation, he said. Tamara Kaleeva, who heads the media support group Adil Soz, says that to stop people joining unions and other organisations, employers misuse a contractual clause designed to stop their staff freelancing for rival media outlets. Its universal, and people agree to it, she said. Seitkazy Mataev, who heads the Union of Journalists, confirmed that job applicants had little choice but to sign away their rights to join professional associations. Although his group is called the Union of Journalists, he says Kazakstans media still lack a fully-functioning, recognised trade union. Trade unions are needed to protect [journalists] rights but they dont exist. All attempts to set up such an organisation have met with resistance from employers, he said. Mataev said that in the absence of recognised trade unions, his organisation tries to support journalists who turn to it for help. Rozlana Taukina, head of the Journalists in Trouble group, says the idea of a national union of journalists has proved a non-starter, because the owners and founders of media outlets have banned their journalists from participating in organisations of this kind. Taukina said reporters working for a range of outlets including the Vremya and Novoye Pokoleniye newspapers and the KTK, Rakhat and NTK television stations were banned even from attending events run by her own organisation. Apart from keeping their journalist from organising themselves, media organisations impose an informal but thorough form of censorship. Owners fear causing offence to officials and seeing their businesses suffer as a result. Their concern stems in part from Kazakstans media legislation, which is among the most restrictive in the former Soviet Union. Journalists can be prosecuted for insulting the president and other officials. Details of the presidents private life, health and financial affairs are classified under state secrecy regulations. Media legislation passed in 1999 has undergone numerous changes, each time strengthening the authorities hand. The most recent initiative is a bill to control the internet more tightly, which was discussed in parliament last month. (For more on this bill, see Kazak Rights Groups Denounce Internet Censorship Bill, RCA No. 569, 12-Mar-09.) Apart from the law, the government can also exert pressure through its control of most of the countrys printing presses and the bulk of radio and TV broadcasting facilities. Journalists say that in practice, their work is restricted less by the law than by internal rules made up by media owners. Merely asking the wrong question of an official can put their jobs at risk. One example of this is the recent case of Lukpan Akhmedyarov, a journalist in the northwestern city of Uralsk who lost his job because his superiors were unhappy with a question he put to the regional governor. At a press conference in January, Akhmedyarov, a news editor with the private TV station TDK-42, asked Baktykozha Izmukhambetov, governor of West Kazakhstan region, about whether a firm belonging to one of his relatives was going to bid for a state-funded construction project. Governor Izmukhambetov described the question as unethical and underhand and said his relatives had as much right as anyone else to take part in public tenders. Interviewed by IWPR, Akhmedyarov said that following the incident, the founder of the TV station, Serik Mergaliev, reprimanded him for behaviour damaging to the interests of the TV company. I was asked to resign of my own free will, but I refused to do so, said the journalist. Akhmedyarov says he has since been demoted from editor to reporter. He has refused to sign his name in agreement to this decision and has stopped going in to work. He is working freelance at the moment, but has not been formally dismissed. A number of media NGOs including Journalists in Danger and the Union of Journalists wrote to the culture and education minister expressing concern over the case, but have heard nothing back so far. The Adil Soz groups Kaleeva said most journalists are constrained by unwritten rules which amount to self-censorship works. Managers make it clear what subjects are off-limits at editorial meetings and one-to-one chats, and issue warnings when people overstep the mark. I have a contract with my employer which does not contain any prohibitive clauses, but despite this every journalist working at our newspaper knows what he can and cannot write, said a journalist from Oskemen (also known as Ust-Kamenogorsk) in northeastern Kazakstan, who gave his name as Talgat. We dont criticise the president and his circle. That would be pointless, and it wouldnt get published anyway. If we do criticise the local authorities we have to do so carefully. There are unwritten taboos and if you break the rules, theyll find a reason to sack you. And no one wants to lose their job. In Taraz, Yerjan said our founder likes to reiterate that we are not the opposition, we are law-abiding citizens. He said journalists were given clear guidelines as to how far they could go with criticism. In the rare cases when we do publish critical reports, it is directed at school directors, the heads of hospitals, and lower-ranking officials. As an example of owners great reluctance to rock the boat, he cited the case of opposition newspaper editor Ramazan Yesergepov, detained in January after he published a leaked letter ostensibly written by security service officers. (IWPR reported on this in Kazakstan: Growing Calls for Editors Release, RCA No. 563, 23-Jan-09.) Although Yesergepov was arrested in Taraz, the local media were the last to report the story, said Yerjan. A journalist in Shymkent, also in southern Kazakstan, said he was under instructions from his editor not to criticise officials or publish material that portrays them negatively. He recalled how he recently uncovered evidence of possible wrongdoing by a particular official but was told to leave it be. This journalist said he was allowed to criticise dirty streets and markets, and the behaviour of traffic police. Anything above that level was not to be touched if you want to hold onto your job. As a result, he said private media now resemble the state-run press and broadcast outlets in almost every respect. Over the last five or six years, we [his newspaper] have changed so much that our coverage is no different from that in the state media, he said. The only thing that sets us apart is that our coverage is more reserved in tone compared with their [state] output, which exudes of excitement about the president, the [ruling] Nur Otan party and the local government. Taukina says her Journalists in Danger group is encountering more and more cases all across Kazakstan where journalists request help after coming under pressure from the authorities. To escape this trend, we need a media law that is not subject to [repeated] amendment, said Taukina. We need unbreakable regulations that protect the professional work of journalists. The restrictive legislation now in force makes the need for trade unions even more pressing, she added. Natalya Napolskaya is an IWPR-trained journalist in Almaty. TAJIK PHONE FIRMS FIGHT CONTROL PLAN Opponents of plan to route all phone calls through one centre say it will be inefficient, expensive and intrusive. By Mukammal Odinaeva in Dushanbe A proposal to bring Tajikistans mobile phone network under government control is causing heated debate, with opponents of the scheme warning that it will undermine one of the few successful parts of the countrys economy. Under a proposal by the ministry for transport and communications, the numerous commercial phone companies would have to route all calls through a centralised switching system, which would be owned by the state-run firm Tajiktelecom. Officials argue that the system would bring multiple benefits it would improve national security by allowing calls to be monitored, and it would give the state a better idea of how much consumers are being charged, so that it can claim the correct amount of tax revenue. There are three aims to creating a unified mobile network centre strengthening the countrys security, making the operations of mobile firms more transparent, and as a result raising budget revenues that would previously have been missed, the deputy minister for transport and telecommunications, Beg Zuhurov, told the Asia Plus newspaper on February 17. He accused some phone operators of not declaring the full volume of traffic they handle, thereby evading taxes. With centralised control, this would stop, he said. On the question of national security, Zuhurov explained that when police wanted to investigate phone calls, they would have one place to go to instead of multiple companies, making their enquiries more efficient. The current proposal, in the form of a bill submitted to parliament in December, is the second attempt by the transport and communications ministry to centralise control of the network. The first attempt in 2006 was abandoned following protests from the phone companies, who were backed by international organisations like the World Bank. Although Tajikistan is one of poorest of the former Soviet republics, its mobile phone industry has boomed since the authorities introduced a new strategy in 2003 making it easier for private firms to compete with the state phone company Tajiktelecom. There are now ten mobile phone operators, some of which have parent companies in the United States, Russia and China. As in 2006, these firms are fighting the government proposal vigorously, meeting telecoms ministry officials, speaking to the media, and last month writing to President Imomali Rahmon to argue that handing network control to the state telecoms agency runs counter to anti-monopoly laws. The owner [Tajiktelecom] will decide single-handedly which calls are to be allowed through the network traffic centre and how much it is going to charge for this, said the letter, signed by eight leading phone and internet companies. The firms argued that the quality of their services would become uniform, cutting out the element of competition. Prices would also rise because they would have to factor in the cost of setting up and running the network traffic centre. The statement noted that at a time when Tajikistan was feeling the effects of global financial crisis, the telecoms industry was probably the only stable sector of the economy. Undermining this success would reduce rather than raise tax revenues, it warned. According to the Association of Mobile Phone Operators, there are 3.5 million registered mobile phone users in Tajikistan, approximating to half the countrys entire population. The benefits of mobile technology have been huge, allowing the country to sidestep the problem of a crumbling landline network, and extending coverage to remote areas that never had phones at all. Competition between the private firms has made ownership affordable even for people on modest incomes. Official statistics indicate that the private phone companies earned 230 million US dollars last year, compared with just 28 million earned by Tajiktelecom and the postal service taken together. Igor Klimko, who heads Takom, the locally-registered filial of Russias VimpelCom, says giving the state control over a gateway through which all calls must be routed will not only hit the phone industry, but harm the countrys economy as a whole. Some officials and politicians are privately expressing alarm about the implications of reducing competition. Any move towards a monopoly will bring more problems, a member of parliament who wished to remain anonymous told IWPR. The uninterrupted provision of mobile connections, prices and service quality will all be placed at risk. A government official, also speaking on condition of anonymity, said the ministrys plans would undo a great deal of what the telecoms industry had achieved to date. We should should keep the market open, he told IWPR. No one can deny what has been achieved by the telecoms communications companies, so that Tajiks are able to communicate freely and talk to friends and relatives around the world at little cost. Komyob Jalilov, a political analyst with the Institute of Philosophy and Law, believes that the ministry, which controls Tajiktelecom, is acting out of self-interest. There are reports that Tajiktelecom is massively in debt, which is where all this talk of a unified centre stems from, he said. Aslibegim Manzarshoeva of the National Association of Independent Media, says there is a huge gulf between the level of service offered by privately-owned and state phone companies We know what a state monopoly means, she said. Recently a [landline] phone in our office was out of order. We couldnt get an engineer in for two weeks despite repeated calls to the Dushanbe city phone authorities. By contrast, the mobile companies work efficiently and quickly. Theyre also polite, and they explain everything and fix problems in no time. Another concern voiced by several interviewees was that centralising phone traffic would open the way to state surveillance over private communications. That violates the principles of democracy to which we aspire, said the anonymous government official. Hojimahmad Umarov, head of macroeconomic research at the Institute for Economic Studies, which has close ties to the ministry for economic development and trade, agrees that the argument about national security does not stand up to scrutiny Security should be the domain of the law-enforcement agencies, not the transport and communications ministry, he said. This [plan] will lead to growing authoritarianism and to spying on citizens private communications. Klimko of the Takom phone firm has indicated that the phone companies would accept a compromise such as some kind of call monitoring centre which would satisfy all the governments security needs without costing a lot or encroaching on the industrys right to independence. Omarov also suggested that in the current economic crisis, the government had more urgent things to do than revamping the phone system. At a February 25 meeting attended by representatives of the phone companies and the communications ministry, an official from President Rahmons office questioned deputy minister Zuhurov on the law he was proposing. Alijon Rafiev, an advisor on communications issues in the presidential administration, said that in its present form, the bill lacked either a proper justification or financial arguments to support it. He also argued that by assigning a management role to Tajiktelecom, the plan contravened the law. He went on to ask what would happen if a system that was centralised to the extent now being proposed broke down due to accident or human error. I would urge you to provide clear information, conduct an analysis and put forward a proposal where the risks are minimised, and where the existing system of international communications isnt overturned, so that one fine day we dont find ourselves completely cut off, he told the deputy minister. Mukammal Odinaeva is an independent journalist in Dushanbe. **** www.iwpr.net ******************************************************************** REPORTING CENTRAL ASIA provides the international community with a unique insiders' perspective on the region. Using our network of local journalists, the service publishes news and analysis from across Central Asia on a weekly basis. The service forms part of IWPR's Central Asia Project based in Almaty, Bishkek, Tashkent and London, which supports media development and encourages better local and international understanding of the region. IWPR's Reporting Central Asia is supported by the UK Community Fund. The service is published online in English and Russian. The opinions expressed in Reporting Central Asia are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of the publication or of IWPR. 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