NOV. 30 2011 (The Conway Bulletin) – Rafiq Tagi, a 61-year-old widely respected Azerbaijani journalist, died of stab wounds in a Baku hospital on Nov. 23, four days after an unknown assailant attacked him.

He wrote articles critical of both the state and hard line Islam. Muslim extremists, though, are suspected of organising Tagi’s murder.

Whether or not the authorities or Muslim extremists are the main threat, for local journalists the former Soviet South Caucasus and Central Asia states are often both difficult and dangerous to report on.

In Turkmenistan police this year tracked down and imprisoned journalists who reported on an explosion at an arms depot. In Uzbekistan most local correspondents from international news agencies have been chased out and in Tajikistan the BBC’s reporter was jailed.

Southern Kyrgyzstan remains dangerous for ethnic Uzbek journalists and in Kazakhstan in October attackers armed with baseball bats and a gun beat a camera crew covering protests in the west of the country against the state oil company.

A 2010 press freedom index compiled by the US-based NGO Reporters Without Borders scored the countries of the South Caucasus and Central Asia poorly. Armenia, Georgia and Tajikistan ranked slightly better but Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan were in the bottom quarter of the index.

The report card for 2011 may well be even worse.

ENDS