Educators, journalists, scholars can submit proposals for a conference.

Journalism Interactive 2011 will bring together educators, journalists, scholars and students to explore how journalism schools are meeting the challenge of the digital age.

During two days of workshops, training, presentations and provocative dialogues, we will explore how social media, mobile reporting and other digital tools are being used in news and teaching, and to what effect.

The event is hosted by the University of Maryland’s Philip Merrill College of Journalism and sponsored by publisher SAGE/CQ Press. The conference venue is the Marriott Inn & Conference Center adjacent to the University of Maryland.

The deadline for proposals is Friday, July 29. If your idea is selected, you will receive free conference admission and expense-paid travel to attend this two-day event. Panelists will be notified by mid-August.

For more information, click here: http://journalisminteractive.com/2011/call-proposals

http://journalisminteractive.com/2011/call-proposals

ALMATY, Kazakhstan — A prominent Kazakh journalist says her online news portal, guljan.org, has been blocked since it suffered a massive hacker attack, RFE/RL’s Kazakh Service reports.

Gulzhan Ergalieva, the website’s founder and owner, told journalists in Almaty on July 21 that her website has been under attack since July 15. She said the attack was likely connected to the content on the website.

Ergalieva added that she had sent letters to the major Internet provider in Kazkahstan, KazakhTelecom, and the Communications and Information Ministry to urge them to find the attackers and «neutralize» them.

She said she has also asked international Internet organizations to assist her in resolving the problem.

Ergalieva had launched her online news portal last month. The new project received mixed reviews from readers after the 59-year-old journalist promoted her new project with a promotional campaign called «The Naked Truth Is Better Than A Dressed-Up Lie» that culminated in a racy online video.

In January, Ergalieva stepped down as the chief editor of the Kazakh newspaper «Svoboda Slova,» which has been critical of the government. She said her resignation was motivated by the campaign for a referendum to prolong President Nursultan Nazarbaev’s term in office until 2020.

Ergalieva founded «Svoboda Slova» in 2005 and had served as its chief editor until her resignation.

In 2001, a group of masked men broke into her Almaty apartment, beat her, and tied her up before torturing her husband in front of her for several hours, leaving him handicapped. The attackers were never found.

Ergalieva and her colleagues say the attack was organized by officials in retaliation for her critical articles about the country’s political, social, and economic situation.

http://www.rferl.org/content/prominent_kazakh_journalist_website_attacked_blocked/24273734.html

DUSHANBE, 20 July 2011. – The Preparatory Human Dimension Implementation Meeting supported by the OSCE Office in Tajikistan to discuss human rights issues in Tajikistan will be held on 21 and 22 July.

The meeting, held ahead of the OSCE-wide annual Human Dimension Implementation Meeting in Warsaw, serves as an open forum for dialogue between government and civil society. This year’s sessions will focus on mechanisms for human rights protection, freedom from torture, freedom of expression, freedom of religion, access to justice, human rights and counter-terrorism, property rights and forced resettlement, rights of individuals belonging to national minorities, rights of persons with disabilities and children’s rights.

Journalists are invited to the opening at 9:00am on 21 July as well as the sessions on both days at Kokhi Vahdat.

Contacts: [url=Shakhnoza.Mansurova@osce.org]Shakhnoza.Mansurova@osce.org[/url], Tel.: +992-(37)-2265014/-15/-16/-17

Temur had a choice. When applying to university in Dushanbe, Tajikistan’s capital, he could try to win a scholarship that would cover his expenses and fees, or pay the annual $600 tuition. But there was a third, more practical option, too.
“I paid $100 to the dean to enter the university on a government-funded scholarship [with a monthly living stipend]. This meant I didn’t have to pay $600 per year for five years, so I saved a lot,” said Temur, a 23-year-old a recent graduate who spoke on condition his full name not be printed. “Some get in for free because of good test scores, but I wasn’t sure. That’s why I paid.”
Graft in higher education has long been common throughout the former Soviet Union, where instructors’ meager salaries and a culture of corruption have made paying extra fees for the right grade, or the right entrance exam score, a preferred option for many young people. Some education experts in Tajikistan estimate that only few students obtain a university diploma without paying bribes somewhere along the way. The national Anti-Corruption Agency lists the Education Ministry as the most corrupt state body, the Asia-Plus news agency reported last October. In one instance, an administrator at a medical school asked a prospective student for a $20,000 bribe to be admitted, local media reported in July 2010. To put that figure in context, roughly 47 percent of Tajiks live in poverty – that is, making due with under $2 per day – according to the most recent World Bank data.
The trend is having long-term adverse effects outside the classroom: The lack of qualified experts in every field will cause “a very big problem” for Tajikistan, said Oynihol Bobonazarova, who runs a legal-support clinic, Perspective-Plus, in Dushanbe.
“Our students are very weak in terms of the knowledge they receive,” Bobonazarova said. “Those who have the money can easily afford enrollment in any university, but the smart guys who cannot afford this remain unable to master their area of study. This is the biggest hazard for Tajikistan. Corruption leads to instability. It undermines everything – like a tree that is healthy in appearance, but which has worms eating at its roots.”
Existing flaws seem to be deeply entrenched. “Once I needed a 4 [on a 5-point grading scale] to keep my stipend, but I got a 3 on the exam,” said Temur. So I paid 30 somoni [$6.50] and the professor gave me a 4 and I got my stipend – 50 somoni every month. The math is simple.”
Commenting on condition of anonymity, a professor who himself accepts bribes explained to EurasiaNet.org how entrance fees are determined. For matriculation into a liberal arts program, students are expected to pay from $1,000 to $3,000 “depending on the prestige of the department.” Law or economics programs cost between $4,500 and $10,000 to enter.
University faculty tend to target students who are absent and do poorly on exams, the professor said, to supplement their salaries of between 450 and 1,200 somoni ($96 and $257) per month. The reasons for bribe-taking vary “but are mostly due to low salaries — to somehow feed one’s family. Mostly the students themselves force [professors to do this] in order to graduate from university at any cost,” he said.
“The students themselves don’t acknowledge, or don’t want to acknowledge the consequences of this type of learning,” the professor added. “In Tajik society, the prestige of a degree is far higher than the prestige of knowledge.”
Temur believes students share much of the blame.
“Our students only study for the diploma, not knowledge. Our students know it is easier and most common just to pay. If you study, they rarely ask you for money, though some teachers do want money no matter what you do,” he told EurasiaNet.org. “I blame the students. If our students are studying, if they want to study, they will pass. Every teacher who wants to get money will just get it from lazy students. Only 5 to 10 percent of students study.”
Officials are well aware of the problem and are working on a solution, according to Savzali Jafarov, director of the government’s new National Testing Center, which plans to implement nationwide standardized tests for university entrance by 2014. [Editor’s Note: The National Testing Center is supported by the OSI-Assistance Foundation Tajikistan, which, like EurasiaNet.org, operates under the auspices of the Open Society Foundations.]
Under the current system, “each university makes its own test, its own rules. Students apply to a university and take their [admissions] test,” Jafarov explained. “By making the tests automated [and standardized], we will eliminate the human factor.”
Though the project’s first stage will only tackle exams and the “fees” related to entry into university, many hope the system will one day confront students’ propensity to pay for grades. One recent graduate of the prestigious, Russian-government-funded Slavonic University in Dushanbe said he estimates that only three of the 40 students in his department graduated without paying bribes. Most expensive are courses in medical departments, law, business and dentistry because they are connected to professions in which graduates can quickly recoup the money they pay out, the graduate said.
“Tomorrow these will be the leaders and they are taught by the system that everything in life can be purchased. They are not prepared to live any other way,” he said.
“The big danger is that corruption will influence the knowledge base of our society,” said Jafarov at the National Testing Center. “Of course, it also influences high school education. The parents of high school students know their children don’t need knowledge to go to university and this undermines their interest in their children’s education. This is the greatest danger.”

Editor’s note:
David Trilling is the Central Asia editor for EurasiaNet.

David Trilling, EurasiaNet.org

Источник: http://www.eurasianet.org/node/63910

Dushanbe, Tajikistan, July 19, 2011 — The Embassy of the United States of America welcomes the release of BBC journalist Urunboy Usmonov and the General Prosecutor’s Office’s decision to drop charges related to Hizb ut-Tahrir affiliation.

Mr. Usmonov, like all journalists, must meet with a wide range of individuals to properly perform his legitimate work as a journalist. We call on the authorities to drop the remaining charge against him of failure to inform the authorities of illegal activities.

http://dushanbe.usembassy.gov/

RFE/RL has written elsewhere about the disaster in Turkmenistan on July 7, when a series of massive explosions struck a military munitions depot in the town of Abadan, with a population 50,000, located less than 20 kilometers from Ashgabat, the capital. The explosion killed dozens of people.

But that’s not the only thing that’s significant about the incident. The deadly explosions also mark the unprecedented emergence of citizen journalism in one of the world’s most isolated countries.

Soon after the initial blast, the government shut down the Internet and telephone lines in Abadan. The town was evacuated and completely sealed off to all but emergency services.

Hours went by, but the state-controlled media still hadn’t provided any radio or TV reports about the disaster. The only thing that emerged from the authorities was a brief statement:

«Today an emergency joint session of the Cabinet of Ministers and the State Security Council of Turkmenistan has discussed the situation regarding the ignition of pyrotechnical goods, intended for fireworks, stored at a special warehouse. The fire started as a result of the hot weather.»

This sort of thing is par for the course in Turkmenistan. Privately owned media do not exist in the country. TV and radio are tightly controlled by the state, which also closely monitors citizens’ contacts with the outside world. Even a disaster like this would normally go unreported.

But this time, events took a different turn. One of the factors was the unprecedented activism of citizen journalists who reported the event to the outside world even as it was still unfolding — in some cases risking their lives in the process. It’s the first time in the history of Turkmenistan that anything like this has happened.

«Smoke reportedly started rising at the depot at 2 p.m. Turkmen time on July 7, and the first explosion took place at 4 p.m.,» says Farit Tukhbatulin, head of the Vienna-based Turkmen Initiative for Human Rights, which runs a website with contributions from Turkmen citizen journalists. He says he first received word about two hours after that and posted it on the site. It was soon picked up by other media, including RFE/RL.

At around 7:30 p.m., EurasiaNet.org presented a more detailed version of the story. The following day, Radio Azatlyk, RFE/RL’s Turkmen Service, made unique video footage of the event.

But the reporting really got going with two pictures of the damaged buildings (posted later the same day) on the Turkmen version of the online social chat site teswirler.com.

«People: I just escaped from that place when the explosions started,» wrote Jeronimo87, an apparent eyewitness to the explosion, in a comment posted on teswirler.com.

The post continued, «God keep us under his protection from what just happened. An artillery shell fell next to me. I barely escaped even with a car.»

Another user, aylale, wrote: «One of the [shells] fell on my relatives’ home. Thank God that they were able to escape in time.»

Other bloggers described families who’d lost their homes sitting by the side of the road.

There were dozens of other comments posted on the website describing the event, and they’ve attracted dozens of responses.

This discussion was taking place while official Turkmen media were broadcasting their usual cheery songs and reports glorifying the president and all of his marvelous works. Some of the reporters got the word out from Abadan itself before the local communication networks were shut down. In the hours that followed, they kept the story going by moving to parts of the country where the Internet and mobile phone networks were still functioning.

«I’ve never seen reporting about an event in the country like this,» says Tuhbatulin. «We’ve never seen anything like the activism of these citizen journalists in Turkmenistan.» He calls their reporting «an information war» against government control, and says that «it was a clear victory for them.»

By the next morning, despite the official blackout, news of the explosion was everywhere — just not in the Turkmen media.

Only on July 10, three days after the event, did official media run a report saying that «a fire indeed started at a fireworks warehouse, but later spilled over to the arms depot, leading to the death of 15 people.»

This is still fairly far removed from the unofficial version of the story reported by citizen journalists, who say the disaster actually started at the depot and led, in the end, to more than 200 deaths.

But by then it didn’t matter what the government had to say. The citizen journalists had already made their point.

What remains to be seen is how the government will respond to its defeat. The authorities could try to adapt to the new reality and implement needed changes in media policy. Or they could try to tighten the screws even further.

Muhammad Tahir

http://www.rferl.org/content/citizen_journalism_scores_breakthrough_in_turkmenistan/24266428.html

New York, July 14, 2001 — The Committee to Protect Journalists welcomes the release today of Urinboy Usmonov, a BBC World Service correspondent, detained in June in Tajikistan and calls on authorities to fully exonerate him and remove restrictions on travel.

Tajik authorities released Usmonov on bail but continue to charge him with extremism while imposing a travel ban, according to the BBC.

“We are relieved that after a month in prison, Urinboy Usmonov is reunited with his family,” said CPJ Deputy Director Robert Mahoney. “Usmonov’s arrest was unjustified and we call on Tajik authorities to drop their unfounded charges and remove any restrictions on travel.”

Authoritiesarrested Usmonovon June 13 on charges of belonging to a banned Islamist group and indicted him with making «public calls to forcibly change the constitutional system of Tajikistan,» according to press reports and CPJ interviews. Unable to prove the initial charges, authorities amended the indictment.

http://cpj.org/2011/07/bbc-reporter-released-in-tajikistan.php

ASHGABAT — An RFE/RL correspondent in Turkmenistan has been warned by the authorities about his reporting on the deadly explosions at a weapons depot near the country’s capital last week, RFE/RL’s Turkmen Service reports.

A fire at an armory on a military base in the city of Abadan on July 7 is believed to have set off a series of explosions that sprayed ammunition throughout the city, causing tens of thousands of people to be evacuated as many homes and other structures were burnt down or damaged.

Eyewitnesses say that scores of people were killed and injured by the blasts, but the Turkmen government said only 15 people died.

RFE/RL correspondent Dovletmurad Yazguliyev, who reported on the event, was summoned by security officials on July 14 to appear at the police department in the small town of Annau, a suburb of Ashgabat, where he lives.

Yazguliyev told RFE/RL he went to the station and was questioned by a member of the National Security Ministry who identified himself as Altymyrat Berdiyev. Yazguliyev said he did not think that was his real name.

Yazguliyev was accused by the security officer of «slandering and disseminating provocative information» regarding the Abadan blasts. But he said he replied that he stood by the reports in the blogs he wrote for RFE/RL and suggested that he and the security officers visit Abadan to investigate the facts in his reports.

Yazguliyev, who is in his 40s, said he was treated well and in a polite manner while being questioned.

But he said he was warned that if he is summoned by security forces again because of his blogs he will be charged with «disseminating defamatory information through the media» and «causing national, social, and religious provocations.»

Yazguliyev, who has worked for RFE/RL for about three years, would face prison sentences of two and five years for those charges, respectively, if tried and found guilty.

In his blogs, Yazguliyev was highly critical of the authorities — and the State Security Council — for their slow reaction to the deadly event.

Government officials said for nearly three days that there were no casualties and only minor damage as a result of the explosions.

Yazguliyev also wrote that there were not 15 dead, as the government claimed, but rather that hundreds of people had been killed.

http://www.rferl.org/content/turkmen_journalist_threatened_over_blast_reporting/24267114.html

TASHKENT — The second journalist protesting media censorship in Uzbekistan has ended her hunger strike due to poor health, RFE/RL’s Uzbek Service reports.
Malohat Eshonqulova told RFE/RL on July 15 that she decided to end her hunger strike after 19 days after she started spitting up blood and could not lift her head.

Eshonqulova added that another reason for ending her strike was that her hospitalized mother-in-law has lapsed into a coma.

Eshonqulova’s colleague, Saodat Omonova, ended her hunger strike on July 12 after being forcibly hospitalized.

Eshonqulova said that once they had recovered they wanted to issue an official statement regarding their hunger strike to international organizations, human rights groups, and journalists.

Omonova and Eshonqulova were detained in Tashkent on June 27 — which is Media Workers’ Day in Uzbekistan — when they tried to start a hunger strike outside President Islam Karimov’s residence.

They were arrested, and a Tashkent district court fined them 2.94 million soms (about $1,500) for holding an unauthorized protest.

The two women were seeking a meeting with Karimov to discuss media censorship at the Yoshlar (Youth) TV station, from which they were both dismissed in December, three days after staging a protest on Tashkent’s main square against media censorship.

They filed a lawsuit for wrongful dismissal against the management of Yoshlar, but on May 31 a district court ruled in favor of the TV station, saying the women’s dismissal was legal. They have appealed that verdict.

Eshonqulova told RFE/RL that since May 2 they have sent 56 letters to Karimov detailing examples of censorship at Yoshlar and requesting a meeting with him. But they have received no response.

http://www.rferl.org/content/second_uzbek_journalist_ends_hunger_strike/24267135.html

Tajikistan has released a correspondent for the BBC who was taken into custody one month ago on suspicion of belonging to a banned Islamic group.

Urunboy Usmonov was freed from jail today in the northern city of Khujand and reunited with his wife, Malohat Abduazimova.

Tajikistan’s Asia-Plus website reported that Tajik Prosecutor General Sherkhon Salimzoda said the government had «studied a criminal case against Usmonov and come to the conclusion [that it] can continue conducting the case without keeping the accused in custody.»

Before he was released, Usmonov told RFE/RL’s Tajik Service correspondent Khiromon Bakoeva by phone that he was «very happy» to be regaining his freedom but not surprised at the turn of events.

«I believed in the justice of Tajikistan’s leaders,» he said. «I am sure that Tajikistan is building a democratic secular state. That is why [my release] was not unexpected for me.»

He spoke only briefly, saying he had been instructed not to give interviews.

Mahmadjon Khayrulloev, a spokesman for the Prosecutor-General’s Office, told RFE/RL earlier that Usmonov’s release was on condition that he did not leave Khujand, in Tajikistan’s northern Sughd Province.

Usmonov, 59, is an ethnic Uzbek citizen of Tajikistan who has worked for the BBC for about 10 years. He was detained on June 13 and accused of belonging to the banned Islamist group Hizb ut-Tahrir, which he denies. He has said he met with members of the group in the course of doing his job as a journalist.

In a statement, the BBC World Service said it was «delighted» at his release.

BBC Global News Director Peter Horrocks said, «We are encouraged that Tajik authorities have considered our appeals. As we have said all along we believe Urunboy is innocent and all he was doing was his journalistic work for the BBC.»

The Committee to Protect Journalists condemned his arrest as part of the government’s effort to curtail coverage of certain political and religious issues.

As she waited outside the prosecutor’s office for her husband to be released, Malohat Abduazimova told our correspondent that she had only been allowed to see Usmonov once during the month he was detained.

Tajikistan’s Ambassador to Austria Nuriddin Shamsov sent a letter today to the Vienna-based Representative for Freedom of the Media with the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), Dunja Mijatovic, in which he reinforced Dushanbe’s view on the limits of journalists’ rights.

«Media workers and journalists who perform their duties in a responsible and professional manner and in compliance with the national legislation do not experience any kind of problems in their daily activity,» he said, adding that prosecutions of journalists who have been detained «are taking place openly and transparently and based on rule of law.»

written by Heather Maher based on reporting by RFE/RL’s Tajik and Uzbek services

http://www.rferl.org/content/detained_tajik_bbc_correspondent_to_be_freed/24265591.html