Uzbekistan: journalists are being bullied
In Uzbek blogosphere, troll attacks are not very creative, but they have become commonplace. Journalist and blogger Kirill Altman (YouTube channel “Alter Ego” and Telegram channel “Altman News”) has been repeatedly harassed on social networks. “The wildest offensive language, hatred and aggression” – this is what he saw on February 11 in the attacks of the trolls: insults on the basis of ethnicity, the standard accusation by national patriots of working for the US State Department etc.
On February 17, an anonymous user on the social network for gay dating posted a photo of the blogger and journalist of online media “Hook.report” Vlad Avdeev, calling him openly gay.
This is the third attack on Avdeev during the past two years. On July 23, 2020, two unknown assailants attacked him, hit him in the nose (the injuries were recorded by an ambulance doctor), took away his phone, and then, threatening with violence, forced him to buy his phone from them. The journalist didn’t have a large sum of money with him. So, he was forced to let them into his apartment and give the money there. After the criminal incident, the journalist wrote a statement to the Department of the Interior of Uchtepa district of Tashkent. After a week of silence, and only with the assistance of the press secretary of the Main Department of Internal Affairs, they answered him, then disappeared again for two weeks.
The district police officer didn’t take any action either. Avdeev had to personally copy the recordings from the surveillance cameras in front of his entrance. The video became the main evidence, but the case was never opened. After analyzing the situation, the journalist came to the conclusion that the attack was not accidental and related to his public activities.
On July 29, 2020, Vlad Avdeev published information about the summons of the blogger Miraziz Bazarov to the State Security Service, after which someone tried to denigrate the journalist and editor of Hook.report Darina Solod. On behalf of the employees of an independent media, advertisements for the provision of sex services appeared on the network on July 30. Then on the same site, a text of similar content appeared about Miraziz Bazarov.
ACCA wrote then about how journalists and the blogger were surprised at such a rough and dirty work of their ill-wishers. Darina noted in a comment on the social network that “before the State Security Service broke off fingers in basements, now they publish your phone numbers on sex dating sites …”
This method with a sexual connotation has long been used by Uzbek special services in the fight against dissent. In 2006, Natalya Bushueva and Obid Shabanov, the correspondents of Deutsche Welle, were subjected to a similar information attack. Reputable materials about the private life of independent journalist Aleksey Volosevich were published on websites run by the special services as punishment for reporting on the events in Andijan in 2005. Spreading rumors about gay colleagues at that time was common practice.
Sexual intercourse between men in Uzbekistan is a criminal offense, punishable by restraint of freedom from one to three years or imprisonment up to three years.
