JULY 8 2011 (The Conway Bulletin) – Police in Georgia arrested four high profile photo-journalists, including President Mikheil Saakashvili’s personal photographer, and charged them with spying for Russia. The photographers deny the accusations. One of the group said he is being punished for selling photos of a violent anti-government protest in May.
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(News report from Issue No. 48, published on July 12 2011)
JUNE 27 2011 (The Conway Bulletin) – The authorities in Azerbaijan have arrested three of the four men suspected of beating up an American journalist and a British human rights activist earlier in June, media reported. The New York-based NGO Committee to Protect Journalists initially said the attack was connected to their work.
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(News report from Issue No. 46, published on June 28 2011)
JUNE 17 2011 (The Conway Bulletin) – Kyrgyz parliamentarians voted to ban the Moscow-based news website fergana.ru for inciting ethnic hatred, media reported, raising questions over free speech. Last month parliamentarians also banned the Finnish author of a report that criticised security forces in ethnic violence last year.
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(News report from Issue No. 45, published on June 21 2011)
JUNE 16 2011 (The Conway Bulletin) – The authorities in Tajikistan arrested a local BBC reporter, Urinboy Usmonov, and accused him of belonging to the banned Islamist group Hizb ut-Tahrir. Tajikistan has been fighting a growing Islamist insurgency in the past 12 months and has cracked down on media. The BBC called for his immediate release.
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(News report from Issue No. 45, published on June 21 2011)
JUNE 7 2011 (The Conway Bulletin) – Google, the internet search engine, accused the Kazakh government of trying to erect borders across the internet after it ordered all .kz websites to be hosted on servers inside Kazakhstan. Google said it would redirect traffic to a Kazakh language version of google.com.
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(News report from Issue No. 44, published on June 14 2011)
JUNE 14 2011 (The Conway Bulletin) – The main significance of Google’s statement on redirecting users from google.kz to a Kazakh language version of google.com, was its analysis of Kazakhstan’s attitude towards the internet.
In a blog post on June 7 Bill Coughran, VP for Research & Systems Infrastructure at Google, was scathing of a decree from the Kazakh information ministry that ordered all .kz websites to be hosted on servers inside Kazakhstan.
“Creating borders on the web raises important questions for us not only about network efficiency but also about user privacy and free expression,” he said.
Kazakhstan has taken criticism over its attitude towards the internet before. In June 2009, the government introduced a law re-classifying blogs and chatrooms as part of the mass media.
This gave the authorities more control over content. Free speech advocates said it was a form of censure while the government argued it was needed to prevent the distribution of illegal material.
Kazakhstan, which chaired the OSCE, Europe’s free speech watchdog, in 2010, has also in the past blocked access to blogs and websites critical of the government.
Perhaps Kazakhstan is more sensitive to complaints from Google than to the usual chorus from human rights groups. On June 14, Google published an update which said the Kazakh government had decided the new law would only include future .kz registrations.
So, google.kz will stay but so will suspicions about Kazakhstan’s attitude towards the internet.
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(News report from Issue No. 44, published on June 14 2011)
MAY 26 2011 (The Conway Bulletin) – Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev issued a pardon freeing 70 people from prison including newspaper editor Eynulla Fatullayev, in jail since 2007 for inciting terrorism and drugs possession. Mr Fatullayev had written articles critical of the government and denies the charges. His supporters have always said the charges were false.
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(News report from Issue No. 42, published on May 30 2011)
MAY 27 2011 (The Conway Bulletin) – In a move aimed at appeasing anti-government protests, Armenian authorities released journalist Nikol Pahinian and parliamentarian Sasun Mikaelyan from jail. Mr Pahinian and Mr Mikaelian were prominent opposition figures jailed for allegedly provoking clashes after elections in 2008.
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(News report from Issue No. 42, published on May 30 2011)
MAY 2 2011 (The Conway Bulletin) – In its annual global press freedom index, the United States-based group Freedom House ranked Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan as the second and third-worst countries for media freedom. Only North Korea was ranked lower in the 196- country index.
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(News report from Issue No. 38, published on May 2 2011)
APRIL 18 2011 (The Conway Bulletin) – Azerbaijan deported three Swedish journalists who had tried to film an anti-government protest, said the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists. The authorities told the journalists, who worked for Swedish state broadcaster Sveriges Television, they did not have the correct accreditation.
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(News report from Issue No. 37, published on April 25 2011)