Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty should regain lost ground in Central Asia, where Russian propaganda is still dominant

April 2, 2022

To Jamie Fly, President of the Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty

Copies to:

Robert Menendez, Chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee in the US Congress

Gregory Meeks, Chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee in the US Congress

Kelu Chao, Acting CEO of the USAGM

Antony Blinken, US Secretary of State

Diana Shaw, Acting Inspector General of the US State Department

We, the undersigned Central Asian civil society leaders, human rights activists, and experts in the region, call upon you to initiate a reform of the RFE/RL's Central Asian Services to make rational use of their capability and financial resources. In the shadow of Putin's war of Ukraine, the precarious situation remains in Central Asia, where Russian propaganda still impacts on public life. Restoring true journalism in RFE/RL will help your potential audience know that most of your journalists work with integrity and dedication, sometimes risking their freedom or lives to do their jobs.

Observers and whistleblowers write that the decline in content quality and the unwillingness of top RFE/RL management to engage in dialogue with civil society came after a series of suspicious layoffs of professionals. These sweeps culminated in the January 2022 "reorganization" dismissal of Bruce Pannier, a leading journalist for the Central Asia region, from the RFE/RL Newsroom. As soon as the Turkmenistan government initiated the early presidential elections in the country, coincidentally, there was no one left to write an analytical article on corporative level on the same day. And this kind of crisis is typical of almost every RFE/RL’s Central Asian service.

THE SITUATION IN RFE/RL’s KYRGYZ SERVICE

There are many complaints about the backtracking from standards of Western journalism in the RFE/RL's Kyrgyz Service. Observers say that Kyrgyz Service’s lack of journalistic independence contributed to the emergence of Sadyr Japarov’s regime in October 2020. During the days of the revolution itself, the Kyrgyz Service praised individual opposition politicians, some of whom had previously worked as RFE/RL journalists. The Kyrgyz Service suggested calling the events of October 2020 the "Revolution of Hope." However, this glorification did not take root. The RFE/RL's Kyrgyz Service is highly politicized, its managers frequently transfer to and from government jobs, and several RFE/RL journalists have become top government officials or leading opposition activists in Kyrgyzstan.

Today, after a year and a half, a new authoritarian regime has been established in Kyrgyzstan. After coming to power, the former opposition is destroying the remnants of freedom of speech. RFE/RL's Kyrgyz Service did not publish a single report about nepotism in Sadyr Japarov's government, just as it is not customary to write about it in the local media. The top management of RFE/RL ignored numerous calls from the Kyrgyz civil activists to conduct an honest investigation into these abuses of editorial policy and nepotism in the RFE/RL Kyrgyz Service.

CRISIS IN RFE/RL’s KAZAKH SERVICE

The same pattern is observed in the work of the RFE/RL's Kazakh Service. Many actions by opposition activists and even high-profile cases of harassment are hushed up. Still, resources are used to promote fake activists and fake experts. This action shows how RFE/RL resources are expended to manipulate mass information.

The most recent example, dated February 20, 2022, shows that almost all Western mass media and some mass media in Kazakhstan published news that internationally recognized think-tank OCCRP found secret million-dollar accounts of the second president of Kazakhstan Kassym-Jomart Tokayev's family in the Swiss bank Credit Suisse. Still, the RFE/RL's Kazakh Service subjected this topic to manipulation. The first news on this topic was published here only about 24 hours later when there was a denial from Tokayev's press secretary that "Tokayev's family does not have any accounts in the Swiss bank." The RFE/RL's Kazakh site published the report and news on February 21, 2022, highlighting the denial of Tokayev's press secretary the same way as the local pro-government mass media. But the Kazakh Service was active in another topic, it held journalistic investigations about numerous properties of the family of the first president of Kazakhstan Nursultan Nazarbayev during 2021 and in the middle of January events of 2022. Still, they did not hold any such own investigation about the family of the second president Kassym-Jomart Tokayev. As the propaganda agenda in Kazakhstan has been fickle, so has the tone of the editorial policy of the RFE/RL's Kazakh Service, from pro-Nazarbayev to anti-Nazarbayev over the past ten years.

Local civil activists say the RFE/RL Kazakh Service's independence suffers because it duplicates Kazakh state propaganda. The Kazakh Service couldn’t offer its audience a single own video or a single own photo documenting how protesters' mass bloodshed and dispersal took place in January 2022, when peaceful demonstrations turned into the biggest outbreak of violence in the largest Kazakh city of Almaty. It is clear that there was a risk to the lives and safety of journalists, but journalists from local or foreign media outlets have captured such video and photos on the Almaty's central square. For example, the Kazakh Service published a report on January 12, 2022, about the dramatic events in the city of Almaty, and out of the 13 photos, only two were taken by reporters from the Kazakh Service itself, other 11 photos were taken by the reporters of Reuters, Associated Press, and TASS. Consequently, the poor quality of the Kazakh Service's content does not allow Western media and experts on Central Asia to refer to it as a source of information.

KICKBACK IN RFE/RL's TURKMEN SERVICE

The Turkmen authorities have also influenced the RFE/RL's Turkmen Service, which deliberately avoids political topics and replaces human rights issues with social themes. Turkmen dissidents have been publicly claiming for years that the Turkmen Service participates in disinformation campaigns; however, RFE/RL's top management continues to ignore reports and complaints about them. As a result, many key events are silenced. For example, according to a civil activist in the capital city of Ashgabat, doctor Khursanay Ismatullayeva, who has been fighting for several years against violating her professional rights, repeatedly called the RFE/RL's Turkmen Service last summer to tell about violations of her rights and the lack of response from the Turkmen law enforcement agencies to her letters. However, the RFE/RL's Turkmen Service refused to interview her under various pretexts. Shortly afterward, on July 16, 2021, Khursanai Ismatullaeva was arrested by representatives of the Turkmen special secret services and sentenced to nine years in prison on fabricated charges. Her arrest was strongly condemned by Human Rights Watch, Turkmen human rights organizations, and members of the European Parliament. However, the RFE/RL's Turkmen Service has ignored listening to the complaint of this woman and hasn't reported about the issue in a professional manner.

The RFE/RL's Turkmen Service had, wave after wave, gotten rid of professional journalists under the pretext of "reorganization," whose places were taken by inexperienced and unqualified journalists apparently by patronage. The sweeps culminated in 2018 with the firing of an internationally recognized reporter in Turkmenistan, Soltan Achilova. She is known for repeatedly being physically attacked in response to her courageous reporting. International human rights organizations and RFE/RL have repeatedly condemned these attacks. The Turkmen Service took many of her reports off the air because its editorial policy tacitly banned human rights and political topics. However, Soltan Achilova’s courage continues to receive international recognition, in 2021 she was a finalist for the Martin Ennals International Award. The International Film Festival and Forum on Human Rights in Geneva devoted its edition to Soltan Achilova in 2021. Meanwhile, the RFE/RL's Turkmen Service continues to deny speech to critics of the Turkmen regime, of whom few have survived prisons, and hardly a dozen remain in exile around the world.

STAGNATION IN RFE/RL’s TAJIK AND UZBEK SERVICES

In the wake of the international scandal in 2019 in the leading American press, the RFE/RL’s Tajik Service has found itself in stagnation. The topics of reporting from Tajikistan are mostly limited to social or cultural issues. The analytical part of the content is missing, and the potential of RFE/RL to promote democratic values without censorship and with full context has not been realized. The expected restoration of the reputation of RFE/RL's Tajik Service, which had been exposed for its involvement in the propaganda of Tajik President Emomali Rakhmon, did not happen. The Rakhmon family-controlled radio company Imruz continues to receive money from RFE/RL for rebroadcasting its radio program in the capital city of Dushanbe. The business center owned by the Rakhmon family continues to rent its space to RFE/RL's Dushanbe bureau. There has been no development in the quality of news production either; it remains at a low level. For example, on November 19, 2021, the Tajik Service published a fake news item titled "Companies from Hong Kong will launch a joint mining project in Tajikistan," based on unconfirmed information from only one source. This mock got into some local media and was soon debunked, but the fake news has not been removed from the RFE/RL's Tajik Service website. This situation shows that the quality of editorial control here is low or almost nonexistent.

The content quality of the RFE/RL's Uzbek Service has become similarly lowbrow. Human rights activists complain that the Uzbek Service’s content sneaks in reports and news that benefit the Uzbek regime. However, their appeals to RFE/RL to investigate such suspicious cases are not understood by the top management of RFE/RL. For example, activists have requested an investigation into the May 6, 2021 publication of a suspicious report in the Uzbek Service that three former Uzbekistani top officials convicted of corruption are not allegedly being tortured. The report was based on information from only one source; other sources did not support this news.

PROPOSAL TO REFORM RFE/RL AND INCREASE ITS FUNDING

Unfortunately, the RFE/RL has ignored the calls of European human rights defenders and civil activists in Central Asia to turn its Central Asian services toward civil society. Observers say that this problem may be circularity in top management. For example, one of the new top managers brought at least three people from his former workplace BBC, London, to the RFE/RL's Central Asian services, but the expected effect of their work has not happened. This act suggests that employees selection process at RFE/RL is conducted formally or being undertaken only within the corporation, which violates the principle of equal job opportunity.

Public activists from Central Asia repeatedly urged RFE/RL to ensure its due content quality but their attempts to have a dialog met several obstacles. Some RFE/RL managers mocked their opponents in public discussions calling them "puppies","titushkas" or even stating that their "mouths and butts are the same." All of this would not have happened if the top RFE/RL management had responded in a timely and correct manner to the concerns of the civilian public in the broadcasting region. RFE/RL top managers usually respond with formal replies or even a veiled accusation that "some dark forces are behind the criticism". We call on the top management of RFE/RL and government bodies in Washington DC to reform the RFE/RL's Central Asian Services. It also makes sense to increase funding for RFE/RL. It is vital to successfully counter Russian propaganda in Central Asia and promote democratic values, the only ones that can lay the foundation for global stability in this essential post-Soviet region.