Internet in Uzbekistan: Blocking or Incompetent Specialists?

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In mid-January, Uzbekistan provided access to Facebook and YouTube all of a sudden. Many people thought it was related to the forthcoming visit of president Shavkat Mirziyoyev to Europe, but later that evening the access to these services was denied again.

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The users in Uzbekistan call the lack of access to some internet resources a blocking, but the authorities deny any restrictions and attribute them to the improvement of internet quality in the country, which can hardly be seen by anyone.

Not that long ago, few people in Uzbekistan knew about the VPN technology. Today, it is a massive tool preceding the internet access for thousands of people of the country.

Uzbekistanis started using VPN on a massive scale since September 2018. It all started with the shutdown of Facebook, which is popular in the country. One month later, YouTube video hosting, which is no less popular, became unavailable.

No officials have commented on this situation for a long time. The silence was broken in the end of November, when a representative of Uzbektelecom national company – a monopolist in the sphere of internet services in the country – associated the problem with the “first-ever change of the cryptographic key”, which was made on October 11, 2018.

However, this declaration didn’t satisfy all people. Active internet users and bloggers think that these popular resources have been blocked by the government because they were a place of discussion of various topics, including long-standing problems in the society.

The expert community holds the same opinion. Freelance political analyst Rafael Sattarov reminded that there were talks about blocking social media even during the first president Islam Karimov. However, they hesitated to take this measure:

Black list

Suspicions about internet censorship are justified. The country has blocked websites of independent mass media that write critical articles about Uzbekistan for many years without any explanation, and citizens are well aware of that.

Among them are Fergana news agency, Tsentr-1, Uzbek services of radio Freedom (Ozodlik), BBC, Voice of America, and others. Last June, popular news websites, Kun.uz and Xabar.uz, were unavailable for a while. Many people called it a pressure on journalists.

However, Uzbekistan does not have any list of banned websites. And the authorities still do not admit they block any unwanted resources. However, this list can appear soon.

Last September, following the detentions of some religious bloggers, the government adopted a document specifying the procedure of granting limited access to websites containing information, which may not be disseminated.

Websites and blogs containing calls for violent change of the constitutional system, spreading the ideas of violence, terrorism, religious extremism, national, ethnic or religious hatred, promoting drugs, pornography, etc., can face blocking.

However, the attitude of the government towards local media has changed when the new president came to power. Today, after many years of total control and stagnation, Uzbekistan media outlets compete with each other for the prompt coverage of issues, stronger criticism of the actions of officials, except for the actions at the highest level of power. And internet segment leads in this regard, according to Rafael Sattarov:

According to the expert, internet journalism in Uzbekistan has a potential to become an alternative to the state propaganda.

Also, he is concerned about the fact that Uzbek bloggers and online media outlets “turn into the vehicle of propaganda of the city mayor, certain puppet oligarchs, and become a web branch of the state grey propaganda.”

Bad settings

Internet censorship in Uzbekistan fails from time to time. Then users who visit websites unavailable in the country can do this freely, without using VPN, anonymizers or proxy servers.

The last time something of the kind happened was fairly recently – January 15. That day, internet users in Uzbekistan gained access to Facebook and YouTube. However, as usual, their joy was short-lived. In the evening, these websites became unavailable to them.

Despite the fact that all local media outlets wrote about VPN-free access to popular websites, no official statements were made in this regard.

An expert, who knows the situation in the sector from within and who asked not to be named, thinks that the statement of blocking is not consistent with the reality.  He related the lack of access to social media with a common incompetence of local specialists, who cannot set up the hardware after the change of the cryptographic key.

“The cryptographic protection has changed, just like servers with personal settings. Local hardware in Uzbekistan also has their own settings. The lack of access to Facebook and YouTube was most likely caused by failed global settings applied by Uzbek specialists,” he said.

In his opinion, all these factors as a whole could create a kind of a network conflict, which is proved by internet interruptions, which are still taking place. He thinks that on January 15 it was a kind of a test of settings because social media were available for a long time.

The situation is aggravated by modernisation of the internet in Uzbekistan. This is related to the intention of the national Uzbektelecom operator to increase the internet capacity many times.

According to the expert, the whole system is being modernised now and massive internet disconnections are related to the “work of people”.

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This article was prepared as part of the Giving Voice, Driving Change – from the Borderland to the Steppes Project implemented with the financial support of the Foreign Ministry of Norway. The opinions expressed in the article do not reflect the position of the editorial or donor.