Media is in no short supply in Uzbekistan, but state media and access to independent and international media is tightly controlled by the state.  Historically, Western governments have actively promoted alternative information in the region through shortwave radio broadcasts, satellite television, and Internet media.  In recent years however, Uzbekistan has almost completely stamped out independent and international voices as well as Western-funded programs to support them.  The international community has done little to condemn these developments and the West’s will to counter Uzbekistan’s censors appears to be wavering.

BACKGROUND: The honeymoon of relations between Uzbekistan and the West, though long over, gave Uzbek citizens and interested international observers a taste of the information streams the country could send and receive.  Following the Soviet collapse, Western interest in Central Asia grew steadily and international appetite for print media on the region increased accordingly. This demand for information was satisfied not only by a sharp spike in the number of ex-Peace Corps adventure novels and think tank newsletters, but also by a number of factual and analytical news websites dedicated to the region.

As tourists, NGO workers and diplomats came to town, they brought with them a number of western ideals including freedom of speech and freedom of the press.  Seeking to exercise the new liberties the USSR’s collapse permitted, media organizations such as the BBC and Internews encouraged and facilitated the flow of independent information in and out of the country.  Satellite dishes made their way to the wealthy and public access to the Internet increased exponentially, as the establishment of internet cafes and local language websites fed off of one another.

Uzbekistan’s experiment with media and personal freedoms was always a tentative one, however, and in the early 2000s the government began to tighten the noose on critical reporting. Following the May 13, 2005 events in Andijan, Uzbekistan opened a full-out assault on foreign and independent journalists and media outlets.

Even before it pushed independent and international voices out of the country, Uzbekistan had begun to put its state news services online in local languages and English for audiences both at home and abroad. In apparent simulation of the UK’s BBC or France’s France 24, Uzbekistan developed slightly less flashy and substantially less objective state mouthpieces such as uzreport.com, uza.uz, pv.uz, uzbekistonovozi.uz, narodnoeslovo.uz as well as presidential, legislative, judicial and executive branch websites.

Western consumers of authoritarian media can pick and choose from among these news sources, examine them against Western media and consume them with a grain of salt.  The majority of Uzbeks do not have this luxury.  Although most western media outlets publish online, most Central Asian consumers cannot read it because it is not in a local language.

The West has created websites intended to bridge the language gap. Government-sponsored services such as the BBC, Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty and Voice of America publish sections in Uzbek.  Many more public and private-run sites publish in Russian.

But due to Uzbekistan’s insistence on controlling information flows, websites that catch the attention of the Uzbek authorities are often blocked.  Local independent sites such as muslimuzbekistan.org, ferghana.ru, forum.arbuz.com, uzmetronom.com, uznews.net and opposition party websites such as uzbekistanerk.org and sunshineuzbekistan.org are all almost universally, permanently blocked in Uzbekistan.

English-language websites which focus specifically on Central Asia or Uzbekistan are also likely to be blocked, particularly if they carry articles critical of the regime and its policies.  Eurasianet.org and tol.cz have long been subject to sporadic blocking and Registan.net was blocked for the first time on March 17 this year.  Those sites which the government typically permits to function freely are almost always cut off in the run-up to national elections, or in times of crisis, such as the May 2005 events in Andijan.  State controlled news is often the only source of information that remains available to local citizens.

Uzbekistan is not unique in preventing access to certain websites, but alongside Turkmenistan, the completeness of the information block is notable, placing the country on par with countries like Burma, Cuba and Tunisia. By showing little response to the forced exodus of Uzbekistan’s independent and international media scene, the West appears to be giving up.

IMPLICATIONS: Uzbekistan’s system of state-run media and effective censorship is largely paralleled throughout the Former Soviet Union, the Middle East and beyond.  The private sector responded long ago by providing proxy-server connections to paying customers, but this solution is prohibitively costly and complicated for the average internet user.  In recent years, the international community has made some positive inroads for enabling information freedom, notably in hot spots such as Iraq, North Korea and Cuba. These successes support the idea that efforts from outside an authoritarian country can be pivotal for ensuring public access to independent and international media.

There is a battle for the airwaves and internet bandwidth. Al-Jazeera, BBC, and now France 24 are all competing for viewers, just as Radio Moscow, Radio France and Radio Beijing fight for listeners.  The Internet represents a newer battleground and the rise of high-tech censorship tools indicates that the world is entering into a new type of information war.

The West has the tools it needs to rise to this challenge and work to protect access to independent and international media. Radio programming and websites with expertise in providing region-specific information on and for Uzbekistan and other authoritarian countries already exist, although they often lack the necessary support to penetrate government blocks on radio and the Internet.

One important development is the advent of Psiphon, censorship circumvention software that allows users in authoritarian countries to view websites securely and anonymously over an encrypted connection. Developed by the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto, the project was funded by the Open Society Institute, whose representative office in Uzbekistan was one of the first foreign organizations to be forced out of the country when the country’s courtship of the West began to sour.

Programs like Psiphon require upkeep, as they must be constantly updated to counter the technological blocks and attacks authoritarian regimes like Uzbekistan’s develop and share with one another.  Creating new and varied versions of technologies such as Psiphon is costly and time-consuming, and requires the support of forward thinking individuals and deep-pocketed institutions and governments.

CONCLUSIONS: If ensuring populations in authoritarian countries access to independent and international media is not motivation enough to invest in openness, the information the West stands to receive from open lines of communication with countries like Uzbekistan should be.  Secure, anonymous internet connections are a two-way road.   Not only can they ensure access to independent media, but they provide privacy for local journalists, human rights activists and bloggers who have greater insight and access than most foreign journalists.  Given the near total lack of field reporting from Uzbekistan and similarly internet-unfriendly countries, the West has a compelling reason to get at least one step ahead of authoritarian state-run censorship efforts.

AUTHOR’S BIO: Benjamin Abner is an analyst on Central Asia, the Caucasus and the Middle East.