Over the past three years, dozens of bloggers known for their critical materials have been arrested and sentenced to long prison terms in Uzbekistan. Their arrests testify to the deteriorating situation with freedom of speech in the country.
Experts suggest that the authorities use bloggers’ lack of knowledge of ethical norms of behavior on the Internet, as well as their ignorance of laws and unsettled taxation issues, as a tool to pressure them.
Over the past few years, law enforcement agencies in Uzbekistan have prosecuted, arrested and imprisoned a number of prominent bloggers who have investigated the activities of prominent members of the elite, criticized local authorities and reported on many violations. Almost all of them were accused of fraud and extortion.
However, human rights activists believe that their main fault was that these bloggers were very sharply criticizing the actions of local authorities and highlighting the deteriorating situation with freedom of speech in the country. This has been noted in many reports and reports of international human rights organizations.
Reversal
People in Uzbekistan have felt considerable freedom due to the reforms of Mirziyoyev, who replaced the rigid, authoritarian Islam Karimov, who died in 2016. Proclaiming a “New Uzbekistan,” the new president has made significant strides to improve human rights. Media activity in particular has grown.
But such freedom did not last long. After a while, the country’s authorities began to “tighten the screws”. Already by 2019, Uzbekistan’s ranking on the observance of rights and freedoms in world studies began to decline.
International legal institutions in their annual reports began to report on the deterioration of the human rights situation in general, and especially in the area of freedom of speech and expression.
In the World Report 2022, the international organization Human Rights Watch reported that Uzbekistan experienced a “reversal” on some fronts before the 2021 presidential election, and after 2021 there was a distinct erosion of the right to freedom of expression.
The relative freedom of speech that has been celebrated since current President Shavkat Mirziyoyev came to power in 2016 has begun to narrow, the report said.
From 2020 to date, law enforcement agencies have prosecuted, arrested and imprisoned dozens of well-known bloggers, including Fazilkhoja Arifkhodjaev, Otabek Sattorii, Olimjon Khaidarov, Abdugadir Mominov, Khurshid Daliev and others. All of them were serving sentences of up to 7.5 years in prison on charges of extortion and fraud.
In August 2020, blogger Dadakhon Khaidarov, who criticized the governor of Fergana region, was detained by police for 10 days for rioting but released without formal charges.
In May 2021, blogger Otabek Sattoriy, who criticized local authorities on the YouTube channel Xalq Fikri (“People’s Opinion”), was sentenced to 6.5 years in prison for extortion and defamation.
In January 2022, the court sentenced blogger Miraziz Bazarov to three years of imprisonment on charges of “slander from selfish or other base motives”.
The reports of human rights organizations analyzing the situation in Uzbekistan note these and other examples of pressure on bloggers.
For example, a report by the Uzbek Forum for Human Rights (formerly the Uzbek-German Forum for Human Rights; a Berlin-based NGO working to protect human rights and strengthen and develop civil society) analyzes the cases of 10 bloggers and social media activists who have been harassed for their statements and criticism of government actions.
International organizations have repeatedly called on the Uzbek authorities to follow the human rights instruments signed and ratified by the country and to stop persecution and pressure on freedom of expression. Nevertheless, the situation continues to deteriorate.
No one has taught bloggers to observe ethical standards
With the development of social networks in the Uzbek segment, blogging began to develop actively. Bloggers raised very important problems, highlighted and criticized the most acute issues and problems. They gained an audience of thousands of people and their words were listened to by local authorities. The most popular of them gained an audience of several million.
Being a blogger in Uzbekistan became prestigious. They were listened to. People began to turn to them for help in solving their problems. Businessmen and ordinary citizens began to come to them and offer them money to promote them or tell them about problems they had that they couldn’t solve themselves.
“It became a kind of fashion in Uzbekistan to be a blogger. Their video messages were popular, so entrepreneurs and businessmen began to contract with them for advertising. Each of them had their own rates, and the more famous and influential the blogger, the higher they were. They started making very good money from this,” Uzbek journalist Abror Kurbanmuratov said.
Bloggers began to compete with the well-known media. However, gaining popularity, many of them began to criticize very harshly the actions of the authorities and not only them. At the same time, they often did not observe ethical norms, could interfere in personal life, use incorrect expressions, for which they were repeatedly criticized in social networks.
Observers note that over the past three years it was bloggers who were subjected to real arrests, trials and long prison terms. With the exception of journalists accused of organizing protests in Karakalpakstan in July 2022.
The main problem with bloggers is that they are not familiar with the ethical standards of journalism and are not directly accountable to anyone. They do not depend on editorial boards or other organizations, so it is difficult to influence them, experts said.
Some people in Uzbekistan interviewed by CABAR.asia believe that bloggers became too unbridled at some point, they did not observe ethical standards and often behaved very defiantly. That is why they became the first victims of the increasing pressure on freedom of speech.
One well-known female journalist in Uzbekistan, who did not wish to be publicized, told CABAR.asia in an interview that for several years she had observed how bloggers, in violation of all ethical norms and standards, could insult on the Internet, using foul language, could take personalities.
“That is, Influencers made mistakes that are unacceptable to professional journalists. No editorial board would allow itself to publish in such a tone. It’s unacceptable! Because every journalist knows that there is a responsibility for non-compliance with ethical norms. Besides, there are laws regulating the media. Journalists are taught this, but bloggers are not,” she said.
But all this has also become a warning signal from the authorities to all other critics, including independent media and civil activists, she said.
“This has become a demonstrative ‘flogging’ for the media and activists. Because over the past few years, the freedom we felt, it began to be taken away from us. And now self-censorship among journalists has increased a lot,” she said.
Dilobar Asliddinova, a journalist with the My5 TV channel, agreed, saying Uzbekistan has no organization to train bloggers or monitor their activities.
“A journalist is subordinate to the editor. He follows the laws and principles of the editorial office. And bloggers are free to do what they want. They cover the topic they want. They can’t be compared to anyone. So I think the pressure on journalists will be less and the pressure on bloggers will be more,” she said.
They crossed the “red line”
One of the Uzbek bloggers, Timur Malikov, who has two news channels https://t.me/fayzboguz and https://t.me/burchakosti with more than 50,000 subscribers in total, believes that journalism has always been a dangerous profession, and bloggers who write on political topics can also be classified as journalism.
“Everyone knows that there is a ‘red line’ in the Uzbek media. I think those who work in this sphere know very well where this line begins and ends. [The president’s family, for example, sons-in-law, daughters-in-law, etc.] Those who don’t know, those who don’t feel it, face various problems. And those who follow these unwritten rules can work in peace. Of course, I would like there to be no bans on journalists, but for this to happen, first of all, a strong civil society must be formed in the country. Until then, we will have to live at the current level,” he said.
He also believes that the case against journalists of the Telegram channel Kompromatuzb was a warning from the authorities to all critics.
“I might add that it was after the Daliyev case that these fears intensified. I believe that some of them have achieved the goals they wanted and fought for over the years. In other words, efforts to reduce the self-confidence of journalists, to strengthen their self-censorship, and to reduce the authority of journalists in the eyes of the people have been successfully realized. The era of free media in the new Uzbekistan was divided into before and after the Kompromatuzb Telegram channel case,” he said.
In late September of this year, journalists associated with the Telegram channel Kompromatuzb – Human.uz website director Khurshid Daliyev and former Uzbekneftegaz spokesman Siyovush Khoshimov – were sentenced to seven years in prison, while former Labor Ministry spokeswoman Mavzhuda Mirzayeva was sentenced to five years in prison. They were accused of extortion by spreading information about the official activities and personalities of a number of state officials, heads of financial institutions and entrepreneurs through the Telegram channel Kompromat.uzb
Meanwhile, analyst Temur Umarov, a researcher at the Carnegie Center in Berlin, believes that the activities of bloggers are different from those of journalists, and it is not surprising that they behave differently. After all, the blogosphere, unlike journalism, which is close to it, has been formed relatively recently. And it has not yet had time to develop any ethical norms, rules and laws by which this sphere lives.
“There is no institutionalization of this sphere, there are only individual individual actors, so it seems that they are unbridled. But, in fact, this is normal, because there are no rules of the game, and society makes them up for itself. It is clear that at some point all this will stabilize and will be more like other spheres, but not now. That’s why the authorities have decided to curb them,” he said.
According to Umarov, it is likely that there is some general set of safety rules for bloggers, breaking which exposes them to danger.
“For example, not to cross the ‘red line’, not to cross personalities, not to cross the road to some influential people in the republic-wide or, on the contrary, in the local scale, not to talk about money, about sources of income, especially if these are illegal sources of income. If no one talks about such things, there will probably be no problems. And if someone gets into such a sphere, but has not yet managed to produce anything, it will also be dangerous,” Temur Umarov said.
Bloggers are under special attention of the authorities, he believes.
“Because if the media have editorial offices, they have grantors or owners or advertisers and so on, that is a kind of organization that can be influenced in some way, can be closed down. But if we are talking about bloggers, this is a completely different situation. These are people who make money through global platforms. And they do not easily succumb to pressure from the state. Because they have no organization, they are not dependent, and it is difficult to control them,” Umarov said.
The authorities will use all the tools at their disposal to control the country’s blogosphere. That’s why, according to experts, they are not passing laws that would oblige bloggers to pay taxes on their income. At the moment, many of them are being prosecuted and jailed on charges of fraud and extortion.
In Uzbekistan, the activities of bloggers are not regulated by tax laws, and most of them do not pay taxes to the state treasury. So far, the government is in no hurry to pass such a law.
According to Temur Umarov, the authorities may be deliberately not passing such a law so far in order to use it as a tool to put pressure on bloggers.
“Because when the state makes laws, it is obliged to enforce it. On the one hand. On the other hand, it should spell out not only the duties, but also the rights of bloggers. And as long as it remains such, a gray zone, where there are no rules, then the state also has many tools. And in general, they can use any tools that exist, because no law regulates their activities,” the analyst said.
The Uzbek edition of the Radio Azattyk website quoted media analyst Khairulla Kilichev as saying that Uzbekistan currently has a blacklist of bloggers with a large number of subscribers.
“In their opinion, the more active a blogger is, the higher the degree of his danger to society,” Azattyk quoted Kilichev as saying.
The pressure on bloggers will continue, Temur Umarov said.
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