The Tajik president, Emomali Rahmon, has recently been awarded «the highest European Cultural and Political Honor» by the European Council on International Relations (ECIR). In «a rare ceremony with academics, intellectuals, and political leaders,» the Tajik ambassador to the EU, Rustamjon Soliev, accepted the prize on behalf of his boss. Tajik state media was all over the story.

Not all, however, is what it seems. Very little is known about the European Council on International Relations (ECIR), not to be confused with the well-respected European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR).
On its website, the ECIR is described as «an independent, non-partisan, pan-European organization, known as European Union leading academic think tank.» But there is no telephone number, e-mail, or postal address for the organization even though it appears that it is operating out of Bucharest. It has no Brussels office, the Romanian EU embassy has never heard of it, and neither has any other EU diplomat or Brussels wonk that I spoke to.
On the website, the ECIR’s director, Professor Anton Caragea, explained that the prize was bestowed upon Rahmon because of Tajikistan’s sustainable economic growth, his investment in the country’s health, environment, and education sector and his transformation of «Tajikistan into a secure state, with safe borders.»
Others might disagree. Rahmon has ruled the poorest of the Central Asian republics with an iron grip since 1992. He and his family control most of Tajikistan’s big businesses and he has been accused of the usual human rights abuses: staged elections, torture of political opponents, and severe restrictions of media freedoms.
Getting comment from the ECIR has not proved to be easy. Caragea, the only person that seems connected to the ECIR, writes that he is an expert in international relations and history and the author of 300 articles. He is also a professor of Spiru Haret University in Bucharest, an institution described as «a diploma mill» by several Romanian journalists.

After two days of searching for his contact details, he seems to be as elusive as the organization he is heading. No mean feat considering that he is not only a member of the International Napoleonic Society but also was awarded the title “Man of The Year” in 2010 for organizing a summit on the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) in Bucharest in 2010. That summit, which has the appearance of an official OSCE event, was co-sponsored by the Kazakh authorities. Regardless, it isn’t clear exactly who awarded him the “Man of The Year” title.

Caragea certainly likes his prizes. As a director of another think tank, the Institute of International Relations and Economic Cooperation of Romania, he awarded the “Man of the Year” title to Turkmen President Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov in 2010.
It’s a safe bet that it will be Uzbek President Islam Karimov’s turn next year.

Rikard Jozwiak, RFE/RL

Источник: http://www.rferl.org/content/tha_shady_think_tank_honoring_the_tajik_president/24302099.html

OSH, Kyrgyzstan — Journalists in Kyrgyzstan’s southern city of Osh have been warned against «igniting interethnic hatred» as they cover the run-up to October’s presidential election, RFE/RL’s Kyrgyz Service reports.

Mairambek Rasulov from the Osh prosecutor’s office said authorities will be keeping a closer eye on media outlets in the weeks leading up to the election to prevent any inflammatory statements that might spark interethnic clashes.

Osh was one of the epicenters of violent clashes between local Uzbeks and Kyrgyz in the south of the country in June 2010 that left more than 400 people dead and hundreds injured and/or displaced.

On August 17, Prosecutor-General Aida Salyanova told RFE/RL that «any statements calling for interethnic, interreligious or interregional hatred will have very tough consequences.»

Salyanova also said that during the election campaign, which will start on September 25, all statements by presidential candidates will be carefully monitored by experts from Kyrgyzstan’s leading universities.

The Kyrgyz State Committee for National Security will decide on the basis of those experts’ conclusions whether to open a criminal case in connection with provocative or inflammatory statements, both written and oral.

Ninety-eight criminal cases were opened in Kyrgyzstan last year in connection with alleged «‘incitement to interethnic, racial and interreligious hatred.» Sixty-one similar criminal cases were opened between January and June this year.

http://www.rferl.org/content/kyrgyz_journalists_warned_against_igniting_interethnic_hatred/24300695.

The website Fergana.ru has reported that Elena Urlaeva, a rights activist in Uzbekistan, has been detained today in the eastern city of Namangan and told a colleague she is being beaten.

Fellow rights defender Bahadur Namazov told Fergana.ru that Urlaeva called him «and with her voice trembling said they were beating her in the Namangan city police station.»

Namazov also told RFE/RL’s Uzbek Service that Urlaeva she was in detention.

Urlaeva is a leader of the Alliance of Rights Defenders of Uzbekistan. S

he has previously been jailed, forcibly admitted to a psychiatric hospital and beaten by men with knives in front of her child on the street in Tashkent.

Urlaeva was in Namangan to protest a decision by local authorities to charge three local television journalists with extortion.

http://www.rferl.org/content/rights_defender_urlaeva_reportedly_detained_beaten_in_uzbekistan/243005

The trial of a BBC reporter accused of associating with banned Islamist group Hizb ut-Tahrir has begun in the northern Tajik city of Khujand, RFE/RL Tajik Service reports.

Urunboy Usmonov, 59, denies the charges, saying any meetings he had with Hizb ut-Tahrir members were for purely journalistic purposes.

The reporter said he had interviewed some members of the banned group as part of his work reporting on the region, where Hizb ut-Tahrir is active.

The BBC has said it regards the accusation as completely unfounded.

Usmonov’s arrest on June 13 was condemned by international media and rights advocates as a censorship attempt.

The reporter’s relatives said he was beaten while in custody.

Usmonov was released on bail a month after his arrest pending the trial.

http://www.rferl.org/content/bbc_journalist_trial_begins_in_tajikistan/24298287.html

ALMATY — A Kazakh journalist jailed for revealing state secrets has had another appeal for parole rejected, RFE/RL’s Kazakh Service reports.

Ramazan Esergepov, who was chief editor and owner of the independent weekly newspaper «Alma-Ata Info,» was jailed for three years in 2009 over an article he said revealed links between a businessman and the National Security Committee (KNB).

A prison appeals commission in the southern Kazakh town of Taraz on August 16 rejected his parole request.

Esergepov’s wife, Raushan Esergepova, told RFE/RL that the commission cited Esergepov’s alleged failure «to set about correcting» his erroneous attitude.

According to his wife, Esergepov’s jail term ends in five months. His previous appeals for release on parole were similarly rejected.

Esergepov’s supporters and rights organizations say the case against him was politically motivated because of his newspaper, which ceased publication after his arrest.

http://www.rferl.org/content/jailed_kazakh_rights_activist_parole_appeal_rejected/24298274.html

By Farangis Najibullah

President Emomali Rahmon was on a regional tour, and by all appearances it was cause for celebration in towns across Tajikistan.

Streets were hastily cleaned and adorned with billboards featuring giant portraits of the president. Blooming flowers were planted alongside busy roads.

Upon Rahmon’s arrival, he was welcomed in each town he visited this month by young children — girls clad in traditional dress and boys parading in starched-white shirts. They recited poetry comparing their leader to a revered 10th-century Tajik king, as well as legendary heroes.

A select few — hand-picked and invited to meet Rahmon — dutifully commended the «esteemed president’s» services to the nation.

Scratch the surface, however, and people have begun to complain that what the president sees during his tours of the regions is no more than a mirage, and has nothing to do with the realities of life in a poverty-stricken nation engulfed in unemployment and hopelessness.

Those who sought to discuss everyday issues with the president, however, were fended off.

Increasingly Inaccessible

«A group of intellectuals had been for months waiting to meet the president and they had concrete questions and problems to discuss with him,» says Shohin Ravshan, a journalist in the northwestern city of Panjakent. «But they were not allowed anywhere near Emomali Rahmon when he arrived in the town.»

«Regional officials were afraid these people would criticize them in front of the president or ask serious questions and demand answers.

«Recently, provincial Governor Qohir Rasulzoda visited Panjakent and this group challenged him with tough questions. Fearing the same scenario, they prevented Panjakent intellectuals from meeting Rahmon.»

Some accuse regional leaders of creating a false illusion of prosperity that prevents the president from getting an accurate picture of people’s lives.
While the president received the red-carpet treatment as he participated in ribbon-cutting ceremonies for new schools, hotels, markets, and cultural centers, regional officials made sure that access roads were blocked and cordoned off.

One could put this down to the need for greater security, but the efforts to keep the president completely inaccessible go beyond ordinary security arrangements.

In the southern town of Qurgon-Teppa, a girl called Mutabar desperately pleaded with city officials to let her speak to the president during his recent visit.

Mutabar, the teenage daughter of impoverished villagers in the southern Vakhsh district, claims she was raped by a high-ranking official two years ago. But police and court dismissed her complaint. Mutabar, who declined to give her full name, said she wanted to talk to the president because «no one else listens to me.»

She was sent away by police officers guarding the area, where the president was busy opening a new market and listening to flattering speeches followed by poetry readings.

Rahmon also took part in opening ceremonies for a string of other buildings and businesses, including a press center in Khujand, a five-star hotel, a nursery school and library in Qurgon-Teppa, and the Palace of Culture in the southern district of Bokhtar.

Behind The Facade

It is traditional for the president to participate in ribbon-cutting ceremonies while on regional tours. But locals half-jokingly note that many of the buildings or businesses are far from completion.

During a trip to the northern province of Sughd two years ago, for example, a cement factory was officially opened by Rahmon, but today it stands unfinished and unused.
Referring to the president’s most recent trip, local journalists say, only the facades and a few rooms of Khujand’s press center and Qurgon-Teppa’s nursery schools were completed.

It is what the president doesn’t see that has ordinary citizens worried. The impoverished nation of some 7 million people is plagued by widespread poverty, corruption, and unemployment that has forced nearly a million Tajiks to become migrant laborers in Russia.

Free speech and media are stifled by authorities intolerant of almost any criticism of government policies. Outspoken journalists have been sent to prison, prompting others to censor themselves.

And Rahmon — in power for nearly two decades — is virtually off-limits when is comes to public criticism. During the president’s latest trip to Khujand, journalists were invited to his meetings but were not given a chance to ask the president any questions.

«In the past, we could at least shout a question and the president would answer,» says a local journalist in Khujand, who didn’t want to give his name. «This time everything took place so swiftly under the watchful eyes of local officials.»

Who’s To Blame?

Despite the obstacles, a number of Tajik intellectuals have called on officials and state-run media not to prevent the president from seeing the scope of real-life problems among his people.

Mumin Qanoat, a prominent Tajik poet, warned against praising the president too much.

Even during routine reports and conversations, Rahmon is referred to as «his excellency» and as «esteemed president» by officials and state media. The president has in the past sought to forbid officials from bestowing him with flattering titles or pasting his portraits on city billboards.

«By sucking up to the president, those close to him are causing the president to become unaware of what is really going on in Tajikistan and the world,» Qanoat says.

Suhrob Sharifov, head of the presidential Strategic Research Center in Dushanbe, argues that sycophancy toward the president and trying to «please him» has become culturally ingrained in the country’s elite.

«It is the political elite’s way of showing their respect to the President,» he says. «During his trips to regions they try to keep him happy, as a sign of respect.»

Not everyone, however, is convinced that only officials are to blame. «If a person doesn’t like people sucking up to him, it’s not difficult to stop them,» says Mukhtor Boqizoda, an independent journalist. «It seems sycophants have melted his heart.»

RFE/RL’s Tajik Service contributed to this report

Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty

Источник: http://www.rferl.org/content/tajik_president_behind_the_facade/24298855.html

KHUJAND, Tajikistan — Some school principals in northern Tajikistan say they are under pressure to attract new members to President Emomali Rahmon’s ruling National Democratic Party of Tajikistan (NDPT), RFE/RL’s Tajik Service reports.

School principal Fayzullo Fayziev, who also heads the Sughd provincial branch of the opposition Democratic Party of Tajikistan, told RFE/RL on August 15 that the local education board has asked all school principals to recruit from five to 10 new party members, all of whom must have a university degree.

But Anvar Jalilov, an NDPT activist in Khujand, told RFE/RL that party membership is voluntary. He challenged those who claim people are being forced to join the NDPT to produce evidence to substantiate those allegations.

Tajik experts said such orders are usually issued verbally and are difficult to prove.

Tilav Rasulzoda, a local expert on politics, told RFE/RL on August 15 that the ruling party is afraid that educated people may join opposition parties if they are given the choice.

Analyst Mardon Hojipoor said the NDPT wants to have the largest and best-educated membership of any party.

The NDPT is currently the largest party in Sughd, with about 48,000 members, some 20,000 of whom reportedly have graduate degrees.

Of the remaining members, about 14,000 are said to have bachelor degrees while some 14,000 are high school graduates.

The main opposition party in Sughd is the Islamic Renaissance Party of Tajikistan, which says it has about 13,000 members.

http://www.rferl.org/content/tajik_ruling_party_reportedly_pressuring_principals_for_recruits_/24297

TASHKENT — A rights activist in central Uzbekistan says she was detained on August 15 for an article criticizing the government requirement that citizens use state-issued bank cards for cash withdrawals or purchases, RFE/RL’s Uzbek Service reports.

Saida Kurbanova told RFE/RL she was summoned to the Pakhtakor district police station in JIzzakh Province where she was «dragged up the stairs» by officers, including the district deputy chief of police. She was released after several hours.

A member of the Pakhtakor police who declined to give his name denied any force was used on Kurbanova.

Kurbanova said police told her she is being sued for libel over the article she wrote and posted on the Internet in March about the difficulties faced by people using the state-issued cards.

Police told Kurbanova one of the women mentioned in the article filed the libel suit against her on August 4.

Kurbanova told RFE/RL she denies the charge and believes the woman was coerced into making the complaint.

Many in Uzbekistan have complained about the «plastic card» method of making payments, saying not all merchants have the necessary machines and that the service charge for transactions conducted via these machines can be 20 to 30 percent of the price of items being bought.

Kurbanova is the head of the Pakhtakor district branch of the nongovernmental organization the Human Rights Society of Uzbekistan.

In the past, she has worked to highlight the plight of farmers in Jizzakh.

In May 2007 the head of the Pakhtakor district, Ergash Soliev, called Kurbanova a «traitor to the motherland.»

http://www.rferl.org/content/uzbek_activist_detained_over_article_critical_of_bank_cards_system/2429

It’s a sunny day in central Bishkek as instructor Natasha Yefimova greets her small group of summer-school students, all young journalists from across Central Asia.

With some gentle prodding, she manages to get them animatedly discussing the subject of conflict, an issue that has a special resonance throughout the region.

From land and water disputes to last year’s ethnic clashes in southern Kyrgyzstan, many of the problems that plague Central Asia are the result of neighbors who see each other more as rivals than allies.

But institutions like the OSCE Academy in Bishkek, which co-funds the summer school along with German international broadcaster Deutsche Welle, are trying to reverse that trend by providing rigorous educations for future politicians, entrepreneurs, and civil-society workers, while also encouraging them to think beyond their national borders by considering the Eurasian region in its entirety.

Yefimova’s class are undergoing an intensive 10-week program in which they study the basics of TV, print, and radio journalism, together with meaty issues like consumer rights, health, and the importance of local media.

The idea is to help these working journalists examine their responsibilities and rights as the newest generation of Central Asian news-gatherers.

As a center for specialized post-graduate studies based in the Kyrgyz capital, the OSCE Academy is part of a growing group of programs and institutions — including the University of Central Asia and the American University of Central Asia — that some observers are hoping will build a new generation of bright, engaged, and regionally minded Central Asians at a time when the post-Soviet Eurasian neighborhood is increasingly plagued by rising nationalism and ethnic resentment.
Now in its second year, much of what the summer school offers is strictly tool-kit journalism, which helps students learn how to write a reader-grabbing lead, for example, or when to trust a source.

But, according to Yefimova, much of the class’s value comes in the rare opportunity it offers Central Asians from across the disparate region to come together in a single room and begin looking beyond their usual borders.

«You had a girl from Tajikistan writing a story about the border conflict between Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan and how it affects regular people,» she says.

«A girl from Uzbekistan was writing about selective justice after the June events in Kyrgyzstan and how it was particularly hurtful for Uzbeks.

«Another Uzbek girl was writing about Uzbek-language schools in Kyrgyzstan. So there was this idea of trying to bring events in one of the Central Asian countries closer to your own home readership.»

Creeping Nationalism

The Soviet Union, with its «friendship of nations» ideal, created innumerable opportunities for its nationalities to mix, using universities, sports schools, and even the army to diversify its ranks and tamp down any creeping nationalism in the process.

The breakup of the USSR — which saw its genesis 20 years ago this week, with the failed coup attempt against Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev — brought an abrupt end to the orchestrated cross-pollination.

In Central Asia, as elsewhere in the former Soviet bloc, many countries have spent the past two decades eagerly rebuilding a notion of national identity.

The results haven’t always been pretty. Border disputes and the uneven distribution of water and wealth have sabotaged ties between many of the neighbors, three of which — Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan — are still lorded over by Soviet-era rulers eager to keep a lock on power. (A fourth, Turkmenistan, received its first post-Soviet leader in 2006, but has lost none of its repressive zeal.)

And it is Kyrgyzstan, once seen as the region’s sole emerging democracy, that in recent years has succumbed most dramatically to internal strife.

Last year’s clashes between ethnic Kyrgyz and Uzbeks in the country’s south left more than 400 people dead and raised concerns about future violence in the restive Ferghana Valley, whose long-standing communities of Tajiks, Uzbeks, and Kyrgyz do not always cleave to Soviet-drawn borders.

‘A Very Turbulent Neighborhood’

Anna Matveeva, a visiting fellow with the Crisis States Research Center at the London School of Economics, recently worked as head researcher for the international inquiry commission investigating the Kyrgyz clashes. She describes Central Asia as a troubled region destabilized by even more troubled neighbors:

«It’s a very turbulent neighborhood,» she says. «Afghanistan, Iran on the southern borders of the region, of course, cause a lot of apprehension among the Central Asian states.»

«Then there are historical claims to territory and identity, and new claims in terms of sharing resources. Everybody wants to have their share of the cake in terms of transit and transport fees.

«So that makes it very tense between the neighbors, especially the neighbors in the eastern part of Central Asia.»
But not everyone is feeling the tension. Savrinoz Fayzova, a 24-year-old native of Tajikistan, has traveled outside her native country for the first time to attend the summer school in Bishkek.

A freelancer back home for papers like «Vecherny Dushanbe» and «Digest Press,» Fayzova believes her studies abroad have given her a professional step up as well as personal insight into an entire region populated by people whose concerns, it turns out, aren’t all that different from her own:

«We have a lot in common,» she says. «Each of the countries has the same problem — access to information…[At the summer school] I could see that the laws and restrictions we have [in Tajikistan] were the same things they were facing in Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, and Uzbekistan as well.»

Nurturing Post-Soviet Elites

The Central Asian states may be slow to push through political reforms. But in many cases, they have been eager to nurture their first generation of post-Soviet elites. Very often, this means sending their best and brightest abroad.

Energy-rich Kazakhstan, in particular, has poured massive resources into scholarship programs, sending thousands of students to the United States and Europe for undergraduate and graduate-level studies.

Such moves are seen as shaping a new, contemporary leadership class — something that may, through attrition, gently deliver reforms to Central Asia that its current rulers are reluctant to impose.

Such programs are designed to return students to their home countries armed with an internationally competitive skill set but nationally minded loyalties.

By contrast, institutions like the OSCE Academy — which was founded in Bishkek in 2002 through an agreement between the Kyrgyz government and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) — are hoping to instill their graduates with a commitment to democratic principles, which can be applied not only locally, but within the neighborhood as a whole.

Counterbalancing Nondemocratic Forces

Academy organizers say the school — which offers a master’s degree in political science, as well as professional training in areas like human rights and public policy — is meant to feed the region’s government and civil-society ranks.

In so doing, supporters say such centers may also act as a counterbalance to the rising influence of nondemocratic forces in Central Asia — including radical Islam, China, and — most worryingly, says Academy director Maksim Ryabkov — deepening nationalism:

«The region is divided, not only by economic and inherited divisions, but also by simply not knowing each other and perceiving each other as unfair rivals,» he says.

«So there’s a lot of prejudice against your neighbor. I hope and believe that by having many students from different countries together, we’re building an elite that doesn’t have these prejudices, that is capable of overcoming them and somehow counteracting this trend.»

The Academy is small, usually taking on just several dozen graduate students in any given year, some from as far away as Afghanistan and Poland. But its enjoys a high loyalty rate, with as many as 89 percent of its alumni remaining in Central Asia, many going on to hold positions in government or NGOs.

Some of the center’s most successful graduates include Zahidullah Jalali, who has gone on to work in Afghanistan’s Foreign Affairs Ministry; Atajan Yazmuradov, a native of Turkmenistan who now works in the UN’s department of political affairs; and Dildora Hamidova, a project coordinator for a minority affairs NGO in the southern Kyrgyz city of Osh. (One Academy publication describes the center’s goal as helping to create «highly competent, trans-regional, democratically oriented, and inter-ethnically friendly» networks of elites.)

Some instructors at centers like the OSCE Academy and the American University of Central Asia (AUCA), another Bishkek-based school, admit that many students are lured by the draw of a good education and the potential for a successful career, as much as by higher principles of regional good works.

Jon Mahoney, an associate professor of philosophy who spent a semester teaching at AUCA on a Fulbright grant, maintains that many of his students were distinctly apolitical — a sign, he says, of the post-Soviet contempt for government that lingers in many Central Asian states.

But even as they balked at the notion of public service or a political career, Mahoney claims many of his students were troubled by increasing tensions between the states in the region, and the apparent unwillingness of their leaders to address it.

«I certainly get the impression that they have a sense that there’s an option for dealing with problems in Central Asia that isn’t being pursued,» he says, adding that the students realize this alternative approach is «detached from squabbles about ethnic identity or squabbles about regionalism or going back to some kind of nationalistic forms of identity.»

Pan-Eurasian Unity

Many students, meanwhile, have found their own ways of addressing the social and economic problems they see mounting in Central Asia.

Nadezhda Pak, an AUCA student in business administration, in 2010 helped found the Unity Fund, a humanitarian group focusing on child-welfare issues in southern Kyrgyzstan.

Pak, an ethnic Korean born in Uzbekistan, resettled in Kyrgyzstan as a teen. But she says it was her experience as a high school student while on a foreign exchange in the United States that made her aware of the importance of ethnic tolerance and diversity.

Until then, she says, she was focused on a career in business. But after living in the U.S., with its enormous mix of nationalities, she says she was deeply affected by the ethnic clashes in her own country last year.

The fund, which provides material aid and support to orphanages and children’s hospitals in the south, is almost entirely run by young volunteers from Central Asia, China, South Korea, Macedonia, Britain, and the United States.

Pak, who is currently completing a work-exchange program in the southern U.S. state of Georgia, maintains that while the Unity Fund got its start in Kyrgyzstan, it hopes to broaden its reach to include countries like Afghanistan in the near future:

«Our fund is really diverse,» she says. «The co-founders are from Kyrgyzstan and from China. The girl from China is one of the most motivating people in our fund.»
«We’re just a group of people who couldn’t stand aside and just be indifferent to things. I couldn’t say it’s because of the nationality thing in particular; it’s just the personality of each person.»

Efforts to forge a kind of pan-Eurasian unity raise difficult questions at a time when many post-Soviet citizens feel that after 70 years in the USSR, they have finally earned the right to put national concerns before regional or even global ones.

It’s a conundrum that Bakyt Omurzakov, a Kyrgyz studying international affairs as a Muskie fellow in the United States, understands perfectly. At 36, Omurzakov — who hopes to work on migration and development issues once he returns home — is both old enough to recollect a time when his identity was not Kyrgyz or Central Asian, but Soviet:

«[E]veryone — not only Kyrgyz, but all nationalities, all ethnicities — thought of themselves as Soviet people,» he says. «There was no southern Kyrgyz, northern Kyrgyz, or any of these other minorities and ethnicities. Our identity was pretty much determined for us.»

Omurzakov, who hopes to receive his master’s in political science from Kansas State University this December, says he also remembers the joy he felt at being free to explore Kyrgyzstan’s rich history once the Soviet Union collapsed.

«Our minds and our vision changed completely with independence,» he says. But at the same time, he claims that many of the Kazakh, Tajik and Uzbek students he has encountered during his studies agree on the importance of moving toward better cooperation between the Central Asian states. «We need it,» he says. «Everyone feels it.»

Kubat Kasymbekov of RFE/RL’s Kyrgyz Service contributed to this report from Bishkek

By Daisy Sindelar, RFE/RL

Источник: http://www.rferl.org/content/building_a_new_generation_of_central_asians_to_remedy_regional_ills/242

Dozens of popular websites in Uzbekistan have suffered from intermittent bouts of inaccessibility over the past week, RFE/RL’s Uzbek Service reports.

Many users of the websites have blamed the monopolist state Internet service provider for blocking the sites, but Uzbek officials have refused to comment on the issue.

Since most of the inaccessible websites were available via proxy servers, many users concluded that someone has been blocking access to the sites.

On August 3, the ca-news website and the Russian news agency Regnum were inaccessible. On August 9 it was impossible to view virtually any of the country’s most popular websites, even via mobile devices.

The high point of the blackout coincided with an annual festival celebrating Uzbekistan’s «.uz» Internet domain, which is controlled by the government.

Even then the most-visited «.uz» domain websites such as 12.uz and uzdaily.uz were inaccessible.

Users were most angered by the loss of access to all officially sanctioned Islamic websites during the holy month of Ramadan, which began in early August.

The most popular such site is Islom.uz, which is operated by Sheikh Muhammad Sodiq Muhammad Yusuf, a moderate Muslim leader.

The site’s administrator, Abu Muslim, told RFE/RL on August 11 that users in Uzbekistan have experienced access problems for the past two days, but the site is now fully accessible.

He said he believes the website blackout was caused by a major technical problem because he said some government sites were also inaccessible.

Internet users in Uzbekistan are also complaining that the speed of Internet has dropped drastically recently. They say even popular search engines such as Russian-language Yandex and Rambler are sometimes inaccessible.

Analysts blame the government for the slowdown and access problems, as Uzbek authorities have a history of blocking opposition and independent websites that focus on Uzbekistan.

Many say the government is clamping down on Internet access in the run-up to the 20th anniversary of the country’s independence, which is on September 1.

The Paris-based media rights group Reporters Without Borders added Uzbek President Islam Karimov to its list of «enemies of the Internet» for blocking sites and persecuting independent journalists.

An Uzbek parliament deputy proposed last month the tightening of control over social-networking sites in the country. But no action has thus far been taken against such sites as Facebook or Twitter even though dozens of other sites are inaccessible.

http://www.rferl.org/content/dozens_of_websites_in_uzbekistan_experience_access_problems/24295316.ht