BISHKEK — A Turkish journalist wanted on suspicion of terrorist links has been extradited to Turkey from Kyrgyzstan, RFE/RL’s Kyrgyz Service reports.

Talant Konokbaev, a spokesman for the Prosecutor-General’s Office, told RFE/RL that Ali Osman Zor was extradited on August 3.

Zor, 43, was detained by Kyrgyz police in Bishkek on May 2. Turkish officials suspect him of involvement in a terrorist group linked to Al-Qaeda that wants to create an Islamic caliphate in the Middle East.

Last month, Kyrgyzstan’s Labor and Migration Ministry rejected as without basis the arguments put forward by Zor and his lawyers in support of his claim to refugee status.

Zor’s lawyers said Turkey’s case against him was politically motivated.

Kyrgyz human rights activists had called on the authorities not to extradite him to Turkey.

http://www.rferl.org/content/kyrgyzstan_extradites_turkish_journalist/24293931.html

A military court in Uzbekistan has sentenced a Tajik citizen to 12 years in prison on espionage charges, RFE/RL’s Tajik Service reports.

Obloqul Rizoev told RFE/RL by phone from the northern town of Panjakent that his brother, Saidqul Ashurov, had been sentence in a closed trial.

Rizoev said Ashurov was detained in March and accused of violating Uzbek laws relating to state secrets. Rizoev said his brother is a gold-ming professional with experience working in South Africa but is not a spy.

Ashurov was employed by the British company Oxus Gold, which has a joint venture called Amantaytau Goldfields in which Oxus Gold and the Uzbek side each hold a 50-percent stake.

Until his arrest, Ashurov was employed as Amantaytau Goldfields’ chief metallurgist at its mining operations in Zarafshan, Uzbekistan.

Oxus Gold’s lawyer, Robert Amsterdam, said the conviction of Ashurov is a clear violation of human rights by the Uzbek authorities, and there is no legal basis for his arrest.

Suhrob Ismoilov, a human rights activist and legal adviser to Oxus Gold, said Uzbek authorities have assessed as «classified» certain information found on a flash disk and Ashurov’s personal computer. But he said the information is publicly available on Oxus Gold’s website and is not classified.

Ismoilov said the only classified information found in Ashurov’s possession was a 2009 document about transporting gold. Ismoilov said the information is no longer of any relevance.

He suggested two motives for jailing Ashurov: an ongoing dispute between Oxus Gold and the Uzbek authorities for control of the company or the so-called «spy war» between Uzbekistan and Tajikistan.

The two countries have in recent years detained several of each other’s citizens and charged them with espionage.

http://www.rferl.org/content/uzbekistan_tajikistan_espionage/24294386.html

DUSHANBE — Tajik President Emomali Rahmon has signed a law that bans most children under the age of 18 from attending regular Friday Prayers in mosques, RFE/RL’s Tajik Service reports.

The controversial law, which was proposed by Rahmon in December and adopted recently by parliament, holds the parents of underage children attending Friday Prayers legally responsible for allowing them to do so.

The law does allow children and teenagers who study at state-run religious schools to attend mosques and join religious associations. But other teenagers may pray at mosques only on religious festivals and at funerals.

Officials have said the law aims to prevent children from falling prey to Islamic radicalization.

The law was published in the country’s state-run print media on August 2, which brings it into force.

One prominent critic of the law, religious leader and former Deputy Prime Minister Hoji Akbar Turajonzoda, told RFE/RL that teenagers need to attend prayers regularly from the age of 12-18 in order to learn how to live their lives.

Turajonzoda said the fact that Rahmon signed the law «on the second day of the holy month of Ramadan adds to the frustration and anger [felt] by Muslims in Tajikistan.»

Parliament Deputy Muhiddin Qabirov, from the opposition Islamic Renaissance Party of Tajikistan said that even though the law is in force, ordinary people will most likely ignore it and continue to allow their children to pray in mosques, as Tajikistan is a predominantly Muslim country with a long Islamic history.

Qabirov said police will have to go to every mosque in order to look for illegal underage worshippers.

He added that instead of stepping up their efforts to protect the population, police will be «fighting with young children and their parents in mosques, which is ridiculous.»

http://www.rferl.org/content/tajik_president_signs_law_banning_children_from_mosques/24285911.html

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

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