The Committee to Protect Journalists reports on its web site that the Uzbek Foreign Ministry has invoked restrictive new regulations to reprimand three correspondents working for the German public broadcaster Deutsche Welle, escalating pressure on the few remaining local journalists working for foreign media.
In one case, the Foreign Ministry revoked the accreditation of DW correspondent Obid Shabanov for filing an allegedly inaccurate news report in January about 30 people who froze to death after their bus broke down in the desert. The Foreign Ministry claimed the event never happened. DW correspondents stood by the report, saying they had relatives crying recorded on audiotape.
The Cabinet recently approved regulations which give wide discretion to issue formal warnings to foreign correspondents, to revoke their accreditation and visas, and to expel them. Article 22 of the new regulations prohibits Uzbek citizens from working for foreign state-funded media without Foreign Ministry accreditation. The article could be used to silence those few journalists who continue to provide information to Western broadcasters and to Russian and European-based news Web sites. The restrictions follow a government crackdown on independent journalists since foreign media carried news of a May 13 massacre in the northeastern city of Andijan, where government forces shot and killed between 500 and 1,000 demonstrators, according to eyewitnesses and human rights groups.
The BBC closed its Tashkent bureau in October citing government harassment. Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) closed its Tashkent office in December when the Foreign Ministry refused to renew its accreditation. Both broadcasters beamed local news back into Uzbekistan. Foreign news agencies reporting for a foreign audience such as ITAR-TASS, Xinhua, Deutsche Presse-Agentur, Agence France-Presse, Reuters, and The Associated Press still have stringers in Tashkent.