WELCOME TO IWPR'S REPORTING CENTRAL ASIA, No. 487, March 23, 2007 KAZAKSTAN: VILLAGE BRAWL REVERBERATES IN HALLS OF POWER After three people are killed in a fight involving Chechens and Kazaks, the authorities are quick to downplay the ethnic angle. By Daur Dosybiev in Almaty
KAZAKSTANS BELEAGUERED MEDIA MINISTER Journalists turn the tables on a minister they say is behind repressive broadcasting and press laws. By Gaziza Baituova in Taraz RED TAPE MARKS KYRGYZ-UZBEK BORDER Travellers complain that bribery and harassment continues unchecked on the frontier, whatever regulations are supposed to be in place. By IWPR staff in Kyrgyzstan **** NEW AT IWPR ****************************************************************** IRAQ PHOTO DIARIES, NIGHT RAIDS: Peter van Agtmael documents the late-night raids carried out by American and Iraqi troops against the homes of suspected insurgents. This series of photographs was awarded a 2nd place in the General News Stories category at the World Press Photo Awards in 2007. http://iwpr.net/?apc_state=henh&s=o&o=top_galleries_index.html 2007 KURT SCHORK AWARDS: IWPR has launched the call for this years entries for the Kurt Schork Awards in International Journalism. The awards honour fearless freelance news reporting and local journalists who cannot leave their country when the story becomes secondary to survival. Full details of the 2007 awards and how to enter may be found on the Kurt Schork Award pages on IWPRs website www.iwpr.net NEWS BRIEFING CENTRAL ASIA is a new concept in regional reporting, comprising analysis and news behind the news in Kazakstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. Available at: www.NBCentralAsia.net **** www.iwpr.net ******************************************************************** REPORTING CENTRAL ASIA RSS: http://www.iwpr.net/en/rca/rss.xml TURKMEN RADIO: INSIDE VIEW is an IWPR radio training and broadcast project for Turkmenistan. View at: http://www.iwpr.net/?p=trk&s=p&o=-&apc_state=henh RECEIVE FROM IWPR: Readers are urged to subscribe to IWPR's full range of free electronic publications at: http://www.iwpr.net/index.php?apc_state=henh&s=s&m=p GIVE TO IWPR: IWPR is wholly dependent upon grants and donations. For more information about how you can support IWPR go to: http://www.iwpr.net/donate.html **** www.iwpr.net ******************************************************************** KAZAKSTAN: VILLAGE BRAWL REVERBERATES IN HALLS OF POWER After three people are killed in a fight involving Chechens and Kazaks, the authorities are quick to downplay the ethnic angle. By Daur Dosybiev in Almaty An outbreak of violence involving Chechens and Kazaks has sent shockwaves through a country which prides itself on maintaining harmonious relations among its different ethnic groups. Police are investigating an incident which took place in the village of Malovodnoye, not far from the former capital Almaty on March 18, in which a fight between two local men escalated into street battles between their respective communities, leaving three people dead and five more seriously injured. Riot police units cordoned off the area once order had been restored, and village elders were asked to look into the causes of the unrest as the police launched more formal enquiries. Meanwhile, the authorities moved quickly to contain the political damage, dismissing suggestions that ethnic differences had played a major role in fanning a minor brawl into an ugly confrontation involving about 200 people. Analysts and others interviewed by IWPR differed on whether the clash highlighted unresolved issues about communities and representation, or whether it just showed how unruly people have become since Soviet rule came to an end in 1991. Bagdat Kojakhmetov, a spokesman for Kazakstans interior ministry, told reporters that the area involved was one where Kazaks and Chechens live in close proximity. But he insisted that those responsible for the violence should be characterised by their behaviour, not their ethnicity. It was hooliganism - a disagreement between two individuals which escalated into a confrontation, he said. Kojakhmetov also issued a warning to the media, reminding them that reporting which portrayed an event of this kind as the result of ethnic animosity could itself be considered a form of incitement, and therefore punishable under Kazak law. The violence began on March 17, when a fight broke out between two local men in a billiard hall in Malovodnoye, and one of them was shot in the leg. An eyewitness who is not a resident but is a frequent visitor to both Malovodnoye and KazAtKom, a neighbouring village where some of those involved in the fighting came from, told IWPR that initially, the conflict had nothing to do with ethnicity. Two guys had a fight, and one beat the other up. But then the one whod been beaten up chased after the other one in a car and drove into him, and then shot him in the leg, said the eyewitness. The next day, the wounded man discharged himself from hospital, gathered dozens of supporters and went to the neighbouring village of KazAtKom where his assailant lived. As the crowd arrived, shots were fired and two people were killed, while a third person a relative of the man they had come to get also died. In the heat of the confrontation, it did not help that the wounded man seeking vengeance and his allies were Kazaks, while the other man and his family happened to be Chechens. Stalin deported the entire Chechen people to Central Asia during the Second World War. They were allowed to return to the North Caucasus after Stalin died, and most did so, but some remained behind preserving a distinct cultural identity even though like the Central Asian Kazaks, they are Muslim. The eyewitness said the billiard-room brawl has ignited all sorts of old prejudices and resentments. Now the Kazaks dont remember that it all started with a brawl. They remember all the crimes ever committed by Chechens as if Kazaks dont commit crime as well, he said. Akhmed Muratov of the Chechen-Ingush National Cultural Centre, which articulates Chechen community interests in Kazakstan, insists that it would be wrong to jump to conclusions about the causes of the violence. Its important not to listen to provocations but to investigate the reasons for this incident so as to stop it happening ever again, he said. An officer with the Almaty regional police department, who requested anonymity, suggested that cultural factors provide a clue as to why a minor incident escalated so quickly. Both Chechens and Kazaks tend to live in communities made up of extended family, he said, and in a crisis they will naturally rally to the support of their kin. But the police officer said the aggressive behaviour seen in the incident needs to be understood in the context of broader social changes that have affected society in Kazakstan. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, a kind of free-for-all replaced the old deference to institutions, and people lost confidence both in the rule of law and in the police who are supposed to uphold it. When the laws no longer function, people start living by the law of the jungle, he said. He noted that there had been some calls to evict the whole Chechen community from the area, but he insisted these were emotional outbursts made in the heat of the moment rather than a reflection of deep-seated racism. As evidence of this, the policeman pointed out that KazAtKom has plenty of Chechen residents, yet the crowd which descended on the village did not target anyone else they were after one man. Political analyst Eduard Poletaev agrees that distrust of the police could have played a role. Peoples trust in the law-enforcement agencies is being drastically eroded. This is particularly apparent in the smaller towns and villages, where many problems are solved through negotiations, he said. None of those involved in the fight thought about going to the police. Instead of that, they chose to escalate the conflict by taking the law into their own hands. However, Yevgeny Zhovtis, the director of the Kazakstan Bureau for Human Rights and Rule of Law, warns that there are latent tensions among various ethnic communities in Kazakstan, and that these should not be left to fester just because they represent an uncomfortable truth. Whether we want to acknowledge it or not, this was a mass conflict of an inter-ethnic nature. If people go round setting fire to someones house after a fistfight, there has to be a deep-rooted reason for it, he said. He says that if social problems cannot be discussed in an open and balanced manner, then radical views could garner mainstream support. According to Zhovtis, the majority of people in Kazakstan are tolerant of ethnic and religious differences. But you cant take that for granted. It is not enough to set up cultural centres and have folk-dancing on national holidays, he said. You have to afford people equal opportunities to be involved in government and business, and tackle social problems. He added, These issues get discussed among ethnic minority circles, but they dont get an airing at the government level. Daur Dosybiev is an IWPR contributor in Kazakstan. KAZAKSTANS BELEAGUERED MEDIA MINISTER Journalists turn the tables on a minister they say is behind repressive broadcasting and press laws. By Gaziza Baituova in Taraz A feud between the Kazak media and a government official they accuse of restricting their liberty has led to the minister in question, Yermukhamet Yertysbaev, apologising live on television. It is unusual for a cabinet minister in Kazakstan to come off worst in an encounter with journalists and non-government groups. It is usually the other way round - the government has often come under fire from international watchdogs for curbing media freedom. However, the lines are less clear-cut in this latest dispute, The culture and information minister whose portfolio includes wide-ranging controls over the press and broadcasters - had been under mounting pressure from media associations in Kazakstan, culminating in a letter they sent to President Nursultan Nazarbaev on March 13 seeking Yertysbaevs resignation. The letter was signed by the free-speech group Adil Soz, the Union of Journalists and the National Association of Television and Radio Broadcasters. The move came a week after media groups wrote to Yertysbaev himself asking him to step down. The immediate cause of the dispute was an incident in which Yertysbaev apparently stopped Yulia Isakova, a reporter with Era-TV, from attending a government meeting on March 2. Five days later, Isakova sued the minister on the grounds that her rights as a journalist had been violated. She is asking for symbolic damages of one tenge. Money is immaterial - what is important is that my professional honour was slighted, she said. Sholpan Jaksybaeva, executive director of the National Association of Broadcasters, says the ministers treatment of the Era-TV journalist is a slap in the face for the entire journalist profession. She continued, The fact that Yertysbaev behaved like this in front of the cameras looks like a public act of intimidation. Perhaps the minister was hinting to all media if you criticise me, this will happen to you too! Yertysbaev denied that he stopped Isakova coming to the meeting, saying he had merely refused her an interview because Era-TV had lodged a formal complaint against him. This is just another campaign against me, Yertysbaev told the Liter newspaper. Our ministry gave access [to the government meeting] to everyone who wanted it, and at least ten 10 TV channels were present, including journalists from Era-TV. However, this argument seems merely the tip of the iceberg of a much broader conflict between the media and their minister, in which all sorts of grievances are being aired. Era-TVs official complaint against the minister centres on the distribution of a new set of broadcast frequencies for provincially-based media in January, which was decided at a meeting of a special government commission on broadcasting rights, chaired by Yertysbaev. As a result, Era-TV lost its old frequency because it failed to fulfill a statutory requirement governing the proportion of programmes that should be in Kazak rather than Russian. The frequency it got instead does not reach as many viewers. In late January, the heads of Era-TV and Channel 31, another station which lost out, wrote to President Nazarbaevs office alleging that the commission had broken or altered a number of its own rules and displayed bias in its final choices. Yertysbaev disputed the allegation, saying the meeting was perfectly in order. We committed no violations .We discussed each application thoroughly. From the start, a consistent decision was made not to give preference to television channels which disregarded the [official] language policy in their broadcasting, he told the Respublika newspaper. Apart from the frequency issue, journalists in Kazakstan have other bones to pick with Yertysbaev. The minister contributed many of the controversial clauses to a media law passed by parliament in July 2006 which caused an outcry among journalists, media managers, and free speech organisations. The amendments they felt were retrograde include large fees to register a new media outlet, mandatory re-registration if the organisation makes minor changes to its business, and a ban on editors setting up new publications or broadcast channels if their last one was shut down by the courts. Yertysbaev has taken a tough stance on the media since he was appointed in December 2005. He is seen as a loyal supporter of President Nazarbaev, and many would argue that in pushing through the media law he was simply pursuing his bosss wishes. This case gives us an indication of the prevailing culture of this regime, said independent journalist Sergei Duvanov. As Yertysbaev became the focus of the medias anger, the question arose as to whether colleagues will stick by him and face down their critics, or leave him to his fate. As Duvanov noted, this is one of the first disputes of its kind to be so widely known about.It has already drawn a wide public response, and is a very serious matter, he said. Nikolai Kuzmin, political editor of the Expert-Kazakstan journal, says this dispute is not really between the government and the media, and is more about personalities. In this case, the journalists are not unhappy with the ministers policies, they are fed up with the minister himself. The conflict shows no signs of being a war between the media-community and the state authorities, he said. In a first sign that Yertysbaev would be left to face the music, Prime Minister Karim Masimov used a March 11 cabinet meeting to tell the minister to explain himself. I began to receive enquiries yesterday and today from various media outlets about relations between you and them, he told Yertysbaev. I want to investigate this issue and make my own assessment, said Masimov. Im instructing you to draft a memorandum to me in the next two days, providing explanations to all the questions that I am being asked. Then, on March 15, Masimov was appearing in a live phone-in on TV when a viewer asked about the incident involving Yertysbaev and Era-TVs Isakova. Instead of deflecting the question, Masimov rang up the minister and suggested he apologise to the reporter. On the other end of the line, Yertysbaev replied that he felt he had done nothing wrong as a minister, but that he apologised to Isakova and all other journalists in a personal capacity for anything he might have done. Speaking before the phone-in took place, Dosym Satpaev, the director of the Kazakstan-based Risk Assessment Group, predicted that President Nazarbaev will follow the line taken by his prime minister when the matter comes to him for review. On this matter, the head of state will be guided not by statements from journalistic NGOs, but by how this information is presented by Prime Minister Masimov, said Satpaev. Gaziza Baituova is an IWPR contributor in Taraz. Staff at IWPRs news agency project NBCentralAsia contributed additional reporting. RED TAPE MARKS KYRGYZ-UZBEK BORDER Travellers complain that bribery and harassment continues unchecked on the frontier, whatever regulations are supposed to be in place. By IWPR staff in Kyrgyzstan Bureaucracy and corruption make crossing the border between southern Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan such a headache that the written rules are often the least of a travellers problems. Visa requirements were dropped on February 12, but by the time the Uzbek authorities tightened the rules again a month later, few people had even got to grips with the changes. The Uzbeks put their open-border agreement with Kyrgyzstan on hold because they would not accept the ID cards that many Kyrgyz now carry instead of passports. They objected to the cards since they do not have pages that can be stamped on entry and exit. Tashkent has asked the Kyrgyz government to come up with a solution, which is likely to involve an additional set of blank pages which can be stamped at the border. In the meantime, Kyrgyz and Uzbek nationals once again need to obtain visas before travelling to each others country. Uzbekistan first imposed the visa requirement when guerrillas of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, IMU, appeared in southern Kyrgyzstan in 1999 and 2000. The Kyrgyz authorities then followed suit. There are around one million ethnic Uzbeks living in Kyrgyzstan. Most live in the south and have relatives in Uzbekistan. There were hopes that a new agreement between Uzbek president Islam Karimov and his Kyrgyz counterpart Kurmanbek Bakiev to ease cross-border movement would help reduce the number of people risking their lives by illegally crossing the river that forms much of the frontier. Approximately 90 people have died over the last two years, according to official figures. Gulnara Aripova, a resident of the Kyrgyz frontier town of Karasuu, said the brief visa-free period made it safer for her to visit relatives in Uzbekistan. We used to risk our lives wading the 20 metres across the deep river, she said, explaining that the river sometimes flows very rapidly. Travellers interviewed by IWPR said the visa relaxation actually did little to stop the widespread corruption and routine harassment that they suffer on the frontier. The only thing they noticed was that the bribes demanded by border guards to let them pass were reduced during that period. The border guards still demanded money. Not as much as before, but smaller amounts, said Aripova. She at first refused to pay when Uzbek guards asked her to hand over a bribe in return for issuing a visa on the spot, telling them this was no longer required. But the guards then changed tack, saying her young daughter needed her own passport to cross the border. In the end, I paid 500 Uzbek soms [40 US cents], and they let me through, she said. Fellow Karasuu resident Alimbek Kuchkorov agreed that unscrupulous guards Kyrgyz as well as Uzbek will always find an excuse for a bribe. Every day, several thousand people pass through the Dostyk checkpoint to get to the Karasuu market, he said Everyone who crosses leaves behind a bribe of 200 Uzbek soms. The sprawling wholesale market in Karasuu is a magnet for traders in the region, and an estimated 30,000 people arrive there from Uzbekistan every day. Many people at the market told IWPR that the visa-free travel rules did nothing to curb the border guards behaviour. Some wrote it off as a populist gesture by the two presidents which in reality did nothing to make their lives easier. Nothing changed during that visa-free month, said Adakham Baltabaev, from the Kurgantepe district just over the Uzbek border. Corruption is endemic at the border posts, and no one obeys the law. Though corruption is rife on both sides of the frontier, Uzbek nationals appear to be worse off, often paying multiple bribes in the course of a single trip. The Kyrgyz border guards dont take bribes from their own citizens. As for us, we have to give handouts to both Uzbek and Kyrgyz border guards, said Zokirjon Hashimov, from the Uzbek town of Khanabad. He explained that Uzbeks pay 200 soms to be let out of their own country. The Kyrgyz frontier guards let them in for nothing as long as their documents are in order, but target them as they leave carrying goods bought at the Karasuu market. Then the Uzbek border guards hit them for another bribe, and local police will stop them and extort more money on the pretext of checking their documents. Thats how life is for us, sighed Hashimov. There are other ways to force travellers to hand over money. Azizbek Ashurov from Fergana Valley Lawyers Without Borders, a non-government group based in Kyrgyzstan, said that if travellers fail to register with local police within five days of arriving in either country, they have to make another illicit payment to be allowed to leave. Travellers also face demands for money if they do not have the requisite entry stamp in their passport. Sometimes border guards deliberately avoid providing the stamp so as to give a pretext for extorting a payment later, but Kyrgyz nationals who are frequent travellers often choose not to use up all their passport pages with stamps, as acquiring a replacement document is currently a nightmarish procedure. Of course, border guards will satisfy that request for a certain amount of money, said Ashurov. As a result, Ashurov said, traders commonly smuggle their goods across unguarded parts of the border rather than collect all the right documents and pay bribes. As Osh-based journalist Sherzad Yusupov explained, this hampers the growth of trade since there is a limit to how much any one smuggler can carry. Adyl Ismailov, who heads the Lawyers Without Borders group, said that from a purely economic point of view, it was vital for the Kyrgyz and Uzbek governments to restore the visa-free travel arrangement. It will create great impetus for the growth of border trade, which provides a living for millions of people, he said. **** 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. REPORTING CENTRAL ASIA: Editor-in-Chief: Anthony Borden; Managing Editor: Yigal Chazan; Senior Editor: John MacLeod; Central Asia Programme Manager: Saule Mukhametrakhimova; Editor in Bishkek: Kumar Bekbolotov. IWPR Project Development and Support: Executive Director: Anthony Borden; Strategy & Assessment Director: Alan Davis; Managing Director: Tim Williams. **** www.iwpr.net ******************************************************************** IWPR builds democracy at the frontlines of conflict and change through the power of professional journalism. IWPR programs provide intensive hands-on training, extensive reporting and publishing, and ambitious initiatives to build the capacity of local media. Supporting peace-building, development and the rule of law, IWPR gives responsible local media a voice. Institute for War & Peace Reporting 48 Grays Inn Road, London WC1X 8LT, UK Tel: +44 (0)20 7831 1030 Fax: +44 (0)20 7831 1050 For further details on this project and other information services and media programmes, go to: www.iwpr.net ISSN: 1477-7924 Copyright © 2007 The Institute for War & Peace Reporting **** www.iwpr.net ******************************************************************** If you wish to change your subscription details or unsubscribe please go to: http://www.iwpr.net/index.php?apc_state=henh&s=s&m=p
