'Slow Death Of Journalism' Alleged Amid Uzbek Crackdown On Karakalpaks

Press freedom group Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has warned of the “slow death of journalism” in a largely Turkic-speaking autonomous region of northwestern Uzbekistan amid a violent crackdown since local protests two years ago.

RSF said in a July 1 alert that those protests in Karakalpakstan “remain such a taboo topic that journalists who recall the facts today are arrested, imprisoned, and falsely accused of separatism.”

It condemned jail sentences and detentions, including that of a British reporter for The Economist, and said such “censorship…threatens to turn the region into an information desert.”

“RSF is alarmed by this blanket of repression on a subject so vital to public interest and by the criminalization of the work of journalists -- who must be released immediately,” Jeanne Cavelier, the head of RSF's Eastern Europe and Central Asia desk, said.

Uzbek President Shavkat Mirziyoev abruptly abandoned plans for a constitutional change to abolish the Karakalpakstan Autonomous Republic’s right to secede after the protests erupted in Karakalpakstan's capital, Nukus, in July 2022.

The authorities said at least 21 people were killed in the unrest.

Calls for independence have persisted in the region, which is home to around 2 million people.

Dozens of people including journalists have faced trial since the unrest, with some sentenced to lengthy prison terms on security and other charges. Students and others have reported abuse and threats during detention, and a wave of school expulsions followed.

Karakalpaks are a Central Asian Turkic-speaking people whose region near the Aral Sea used to be an autonomous area within the Kazakh and then the Russian Soviet republic in 1930, before becoming part of the Uzbek Soviet republic in 1936.

The government had proposed eliminating any mention in the Uzbek Constitution of Karakalpakstan’s long-standing right to seek independence.