Eurasia Foundation: Internews Kyrgyzstan

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"If It Wasn’t for That, I Would Still Be in Jail:"

Assuring Legal Defense for Journalists in the Kyrgyz Republic

Story and Photos by Jeff Erlich, Almaty Regional Office

Keeping a journalist like Moldosali Ibraimov out of jail can be a full-time job. Despite recently spending a month in jail without a trial, despite living in a country which a U.S. congressman recently said is seeing "a severe crackdown on the media," and despite the recent birth of his sixth child, Ibraimov has decided to headline his latest investigative report "Criminal-Judge."

Ibraimov, in fact, was part of the inspiration for a Eurasia Foundation grant, which pays the expenses of a full-time lawyer to travel around the Kyrgyz Republic trying to free wrongly accused journalists from prison and keep news companies open. Prior to this grant, journalists had generally been defended on a case-by-case basis. With journalists increasingly under fire from both local government officials, however, and a national government backsliding on its pledges of democracy, the need has intensified for a lawyer to be on-call to aid journalists.

Though he spends much of his time farming a patch of land to feed his growing family, Ibraimov’s real vocation is taking on local officials, which he does by acting as a volunteer public defender, using his extensive personal experience with the law and its officers, and by writing scathing reports of their activities.

About a year ago, Ibraimov stepped over the line when he wrote that a local judge was rumored to have accepted a $15,000 bribe. This immediately landed him in jail, and soon he was facing a two-year sentence and a $200 fine—more than a year’s salary in his area. Fortunately, Internews Kyrgyzstan, an organization that trains journalists and, increasingly, defends them, interceded on Ibraimov’s behalf. Internews was able to free him, relying largely on social pressure. "They told the whole world, by Internet and fax," Ibraimov says. "If it wasn’t for that, I would still be in jail." But other cases in the Kyrgyz Republic have proven tougher to resolve, and journalists have not been able to afford their own legal defense. Internews decided a full-time lawyer was needed.

To fund the lawyer, Internews turned to the Eurasia Foundation and the World Press Freedom Committee. As part of its overall goal of assisting local organizations in their efforts to create democratic societies, the Eurasia Foundation has been supporting journalists in the Kyrgyz Republic and throughout the former Soviet Union for nearly a decade. The World Press Freedom Committee, too, has worked on similar legal assistance programs in former communist countries.

Both organizations felt that a dedicated lawyer would be cost-effective while ensuring that journalists in trouble had quick access to counsel—and might even deter government officials from filing harassment suits. In fall 2000, the World Press Freedom Committee agreed to pay the lawyer’s salary, and the Foundation agreed to cover travel expenses with a $2,200 grant. With this financial backing, Internews chose Akmat Alagushev as its new lawyer.

In the Kyrgyz Republic, few lawyers have much training or experience in media law, and Alagushev is no exception. But over the past year, he has proven to be a good choice due to his unique experience and perspective. Before he started championing journalists, he worked in the prosecutor’s office, where he once prosecuted a journalist that he would later defend. His other strength is his equilibrium—a sort of lawyer’s bedside manner—that proves useful either when delivering bad news to clients or enduring the demands of his job, which puts him on the road at least twice a month. He regularly crams aboard small airplanes; drives over roads with more potholes than pavement; and faces border guards fishing for bribes who can detain him for hours.

A Lawyer for the Accused Journalist in Any Part of the Country

Ten miles from Ibraimov’s village, in the regional center of Jalal-Abad, two of Alagushev’s current clients are behind bars. The first is Samagan Orozaliev, a video journalist sentenced to nine years for allegedly using critical reportage to blackmail local officials. The second is Mukhtar Topchiev, his driver, who received an eight-year sentence for acting as an accessory. Outsiders are regularly denied permission to visit either man, who were arrested in May 2001. Even Orozaliev’s mother is barred by police from seeing her son, despite written permission from the sentencing judge.

Orozaliev’s problems started last year, when he returned to his hometown, Jalal-Abad, to prepare a series of reports on corruption in that city. As part of his report, he was investigating a local Member of Parliament, Ergesh Torubayev. The interviews with Torubayev’s opponents and the footage of the MP’s large house may have contrasted too sharply with the conditions of his constituents. Torubayev, in fact, alleged that the reportage was so unflattering that the journalist threatened to air it unless he pay $1,200. When Orozaliev was arrested, police found $300 in his pocket, allegedly a down payment on the blackmail, and bullets in Topchiev’s car, leading to a weapons charge against the driver. After the arrests, several other local officials stepped forward and said that Orozaliev had tried to blackmail them, too.

The two men maintain their innocence, but Alagushev and Sooronbai Karabaev, the local lawyer who is acting as lead counsel, have not even begun arguing the facts. "We’re not looking at guilt or innocence yet," says Alagushev. "There are just too many procedural irregularities that we need to begin with." These irregularities include, for example: the prosecutors’ selection of just a few of the dozens of videotapes Orozaliev had shot in order to give the impression that he intended to attack the officials; how the additional charges of blackmail quickly accumulated after he had been arrested; and the question of whether reportage has a value that can be used as blackmail.

Alagushev says he will have a better chance when the case reaches the supreme court in the capital, Bishkek, away from the MP’s influence in Jalal-Abad.

Even as he continues to work to free Orozaliev and Topchiev, more cases keep arriving for Alagushev’s help. Next on his list are a suit against the newspaper Delo Nommer for allegedly slandering a tax inspector and a $100,000 suit against Ordo for insulting a sugar factor manager. Alagushev is well aware that it is not just local officials who attack journalists.

While the Kyrgyz Republic has been praised in the past for its progressive reforms, the plight of its news media has drawn increased international scrutiny following the country’s questionable parliamentary elections in 2000. "In the last few years, almost all of the opposition and independent newspapers have been forced to close," U.S. Representative Christopher Smith, co-chairman of the U.S. Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe, said recently. But journalists who "aren’t scared to tell it straight," as Ibraimov puts it, will continue to have access to a defense lawyer whose experience is growing every day. They will also have the support of the Eurasia Foundation, which continues to look for innovative ways to promote freedom of the press.

2002