COMPLAINTS AIRED ABOUT US INTENTION TO CUT BACK VOA/RFERL BROADCASTING IN CENTRAL ASIA

[Harold F. Schiffman]

Civil Society:

COMPLAINTS AIRED ABOUT US INTENTION TO CUT BACK VOA/RFERL BROADCASTING IN
CENTRAL ASIA

Joshua Kucera: 2/22/07


The United States plans to cancel all Voice of America programming in
Uzbek and will significantly scale back Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
programming in Kazakh, if a Bush administration proposal is approved by
the Democrat-controlled US Congress. Critics say the move would deprive
Uzbek- and Kazak-language listeners of a key outlet for news, emphasizing
that Uzbekistan in particular is notorious for its efforts to stifle free
speech. [For background see the Eurasia Insight archive]. US
administrators who manage the broadcasts say they are only cutting
programming that few people listen to anyway.

Under the Bush administrations proposed government budget for fiscal year
2008, four hours a week of VOA broadcasts in Uzbek would be eliminated.
But much more extensive broadcasts on RFE/RL, 42 hours a week, would be
untouched. In addition, the 56 hours a week of Kazakh-language programming
on RFE/RL would be cut down to 14 hours a week. VOA does not broadcast in
Kazakh at all. For a country, like the United States, which is interested
in promoting democratic values, the VOA and RFE/RL cutbacks would send the
wrong message to citizens in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, said Yerzhan
Dosmukhamedov, head of the Atameken Party in Kazakhstan. [For background
see the Eurasia Insight archive]. Countries like Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan
are moving away from democracy, Dosmukhamedov said, adding that political
leaders in Tashkent and Astana were likely to view the broadcasting
cutbacks as a sign of weakness. You cant show your weakness, he added. You
have to keep up the pressure.

The cuts would be good news for Islam Karimov, Uzbekistans authoritarian
ruler and suppressor of press freedom, agreed Ted Lipien, a former VOA
official and head of FreeMediaOnline.org, a San Francisco-based group that
advocates for press freedom worldwide. Lipien also noted that Kazakhstan
has a poor record of press freedom. The Broadcasting Board of Governors
(BBG), which manages VOA and RFE/RL, says its doing the best it can with
limited resources. The services plan to focus more heavily on broadcasts
in the Middle East, and on Venezuela and North Korea -- two countries that
have emerged as Bush administration bete noires in recent year. Wed like
to keep everything, but we cant, said Larry Hart, a spokesman for the BBG.
The programming to be cut is on mediumwave or shortwave, not FM, which is
what most people listen to in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, Hart maintained.
BBG polling has shown that in Uzbekistan only 10 percent of the population
owns shortwave radios and US programming has been unable to get local
stations to pick it up on FM, he said. In Kazakhstan, the cancelled
programs have only a miniscule audience, he said. Theres nobody listening,
is what it comes down to.

But thats not a good enough excuse, countered Lipien. BBG officials should
be asking; OK, if its true that no one is listening to the programs, then
what do we do about it? Lipien asserted. He noted that in Central Asia
local radio stations are likely to be pressured not to run VOA and RFE/RL
programs on FM. You reward that government for shutting down the service
-- so theres a problem with this sort of logic, he said. He suggested that
there was a lack of political will in Washington to promote the
programming in Central Asia. In addition, opinion polling data in Central
Asia is notoriously unreliable, thus there is no way to be exactly sure of
how many people are listening to American broadcasts, Lipien said. In a
country like Uzbekistan, its highly unlikely that an average person would
admit listening to VOA or RFE, he said.

This is the second time the administration has tried to cut Uzbek-language
programming. The 2004 budget cancelled Uzbek programming on VOA, but
Congress reinstated the funding -- as they could do this time, as well.
The United States is not alone in using polling to determine which
services it provides, however. The British Broadcasting Corp. stopped its
Kazakh broadcasts in 2005 after determining that its audience in
Kazakhstan was only about 30,000 people, said Mike Gardner, a BBC
spokesman. The Uzbekistan Embassy in Washington did not respond to a
request for comment. The Kazakhstan Embassy declined to comment.

Bokhodir Choriyev, a US-based Uzbek dissident who last year led a
high-profile battle to get his views aired on RFE/RL, supported the
decision to stop VOA programming in Uzbek. Nobody listens to the VOA in
Uzbekistan, he said. But Galima Bukharbayeva, an opposition journalist
from Uzbekistan, said that even though she never listened to VOA, she
opposed the decision. It will have a bad impact, she said. We have so
limited sources of independent information. For me it will be sort of a
moral loss, we are getting smaller and smaller.


Editors Note: Joshua Kucera is a Washington, DC,-based freelance writer
who specializes in security issues in Central Asia, the Caucasus and the
Middle East.

http://www.eurasianet.org/departments/insight/articles/eav022207.shtml

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