About the Committee for Freedom of Speech and Expression01.02.2005
Committee for Freedom of Speech and Expression was created two years ago.
It was then that I approached several local journalists with a proposal to create a journalist organization, which would raise problems of the press of Uzbekistan. Unfortunately, only a few agreed to support this idea.
Paradoxically, we found support of our idea abroad – from Azer H. Hasret, organizer and head of the Central Asian and South Caucasian Freedom of Expression Network (CASCFEN), based in Azerbaijan – who provided the domain and hosting for this website.
On the example of our colleagues in other countries, we started monitoring of conflicts and violations of journalists’ and media rights in Uzbekistan, disseminating our material through the Internet.
My colleagues and I received initial knowledge on the project at the Center for Journalism in Extreme Situations (Moscow), which is headed by Oleg Panfilov. He also provided consultative support to our organization.
In the process of our activity, publishing reports on violation of the freedom of the speech, rights of journalists and the media in Uzbekistan, we made an unexpected discovery: Uzbek officials are afraid of wide publicity. To our surprise, because of publicity of some conflict situations, conflicts were solved themselves.
Over the relatively short period of our work, we have seen how our publications affected the situation with journalists and the media whose rights were violated.
We hope this website become a real arena for journalists to draw the attention to problems and barriers hindering their normal activity.
Inera Safargaliyeva, Head of the Committee for Freedom of Speech and Expression
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Central Asian and Southern Caucasus Freedom of Expression Network. |
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