#Mediacentral 2.4 for free#

‘Media Sustainability Index 2004.’ International Research and Exchanges Board (IREX). Ivan Sigal, Internews Report, June 1996.ġ7. Reshenie Ministerstva transporta i kommunikatsiy, Respubliki Kazakhstan, 26 June 1996.ġ6. Interviews with Farrukhsho Junaidov, 16 March, 2 April 2004, and 3 August 2005, Dushanbe, Tajikistan.ġ5. Interview with Alexander Kim, 12 December 2003, Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan.ġ4. Uzbekistan's legislative situation regarding internet is identical to Kyrgyzstan's.ġ3. In the Tajik law on TV/radio, internet is included as a media outlet, but there is no mechanism set up for enforcing this, and the Ministry of Justice has never registered a website as a media outlet. Kyrgyzstan's law does not address websites at all but requires informational agencies, which often produce websites, to register. In Kazakhstan, Article 1 of the law ‘On media’ includes websites in its definition of media, but websites are not required to register. ‘A well-known lawyer sent a letter to the UN Human Rights,’ National Association of Independent Media of Tajikistan (NANSMIT) monitoring, 15 July 2005. Many journalists confirmed this, including Internews Kazakhstan Director Oleg Katsiev, interviewed several times, especially in October 2003 and June 2004 in Almaty, Kazakhstan.ġ1.

#Mediacentral 2.4 for free#

‘Memorandum on The Draft Media Law of the Republic of Kazakhstan “Concerning Mass Media”’, London: Article 19, Global Campaign for Free Expression (September 2003).ġ0. Among those appealing to cancel these amendments were Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, International Federation of Journalists, and Kazakhstan's National Association of TV/Radio Broadcasters.ĩ. See, for example, ‘Glava gosudarstva podpisal pravitel'stvennye popravki v zakonodatel'stvo po voprosam SMI’, Kazakhstan Today, reprinted on Internews Kazakhstan website ( ), 5 July 2006 ‘The Senate has approved the draft law “On amendments and additions to some legislative acts on matters related to mass media”’, Adil Soz ( ), 29 June 2006. Numerous articles in varous media outlets describe the problems with these amendments.

For the purposes of this paper, I translate the Russian-language title of the law, Zakon ‘O SMI’ as ‘Law “On mass media”’, although some sources have translated the law as ‘On the media’.Ĩ. See Appendix for the list of questions.ħ. Price, ‘The enabling environment for free and independent media’, sponsored by USAID Center for Democracy and Governance (Oxford: Programme in Comparative Media Law and Policy Center for Socio-Legal Studies, 2000) Ivan Sigal, ‘Kazakhstan’, Communications Law in Transition Newsletter, Vol 1, No 7, 4 September 2000, online: (accessed 10 January 2005) Eric Johnson, ‘Defining a good media law’, Democracy Dialogue, USAID publication, July 1998, pp 2–3.Ħ. Interview with Zhazira Bukina, 14 November 2003, Astana, Kazakhstan.ĥ.

George Krimsky, ‘Struggle and promise: the independent media of Central Asia’, Almaty, Kazakhstan: Central Asian Media Representative (June 2002).Ĥ. Rakhmonov was re-elected in 1999, and international observers again declared the elections not free and fair.ģ. Rakhmonov was elected in 1994 in elections declared not free or fair by international observers, although he had been in power for two years before that. Eurasianet quotes formerly imprisoned Kazakhstani journalist Sergei Duvanov's daughter as saying that in the mid-1990s, there was a ‘booming independent’ media, but she criticized the late-1990s regulations, which ‘drove the most popular independent electronic media out of business’, Jeremy Druker, ‘Eurasia Media Forum: Central Asia's master's of spin’,, 22 April 2004.Ģ.