Reporter in Libel Trial in Uzbekistan

A journalist is on trial in Uzbekistan for the criminal offence of libelling the government after his website carried an article questioning a street name-change in the capital Tashkent.

The first hearing in the case against Vladimir Berezovsky, who reports for the Moscow newspaper Parlamentskaya Gazeta and is chief editor of vesti-uz, a news website aimed at Russians in Uzbekistan. began on August 10. 

Two charges of insulting and libelling the Uzbek government were filed against him by the interior ministry department for combating terrorism and religious extremism. If convicted, Berezovsky is likely to face a three-year jail term.

The case is built on material carried by  vesti-uz. The Centre for Media Monitoring, which operates under the government’s communications agency, has ruled that 16 articles contain “libellous information that misleads and misinforms people. Distribution of it could stir up ethnic and inter-state hostility and spread panic among people.”

Berezovsky himself believes he has landed in trouble because of an article published in February about the renaming of a Tashkent which used to be called after Yury Ivlev, a Second World War pilot hero. The article suggested the decision was a conscious attempt to write Uzbekistan’s Soviet past out of history.

Human rights activists say the way the case has been formulated is strongly reminiscent of the prosecution earlier this year of Umida Ahmedova, a photographer whose images of rural life were said to libel the Uzbek nation as a whole.

“There is no injured party,” said a lawyer in Tashkent, referring to the Berezovsky case. “Only an actual person can be deemed the injured party in offences of this kind, not a nation or a government.”

Media-watchers in Tashkent note that as a Russian national, Berezovsky is the first foreign journalist to be prosecuted in Uzbekistan. They see the case as part of a campaign to erode freedom of speech.

“The trial of Berezovsky is an obvious sign that a new phase is beginning in the war on the press and attempts to drive foreign correspondents out of the country,” a freelance reporter in the capital said. “We must all prepare for the worst.”

He added that two local journalists were currently being prosecuted on alleged corruption charges, but asked for their identities to be withheld for fear even harsher charges would be brought against them in retribution.

There are at least ten Uzbek currently in prison. They include Solijon Abdurahmonov, Dilmurod Said, Jamshid Karimov, Yusuf Ruzimurodov, Muhammad Bekjon, Bahrom Ibrohimov, Davron Qobilov, Rovshanbek Vafoev, Abdulaziz Dodokhonov and Botirbek Yoshkuziev.

This article was produced as part of IWPR’s News Briefing Central Asia output, funded by the National Endowment for Democracy.