A photo that is implied to be of Karimov on March 28, 2013 at his residence in Tashkent. Photo by gov.uz presidential news service.
A photo from the meeting he is said to have taken with the foreign minister of Kazakhstan, with different wallpaper. The news story says that Karimov received Idrisov. Photo by gov.uz.
David Trilling of EurasiaNet has a piece called "Anatomy of a Heart-Attack Rumor" that is supposed to impress us with the leet reporting skillz of "real journalists" who are able to cut through the fog of emigre and NGO obfuscation to get us "the real story" -- which is that rumours about the possible heart attack of Uzbek strong man Islam Karimov may be unfounded because most seem to trace to a single emigre source.
Indeed, the state media is reporting that Karimov met with the foreign minister of Kazakhstan on March 28 seeming to indicate that he is really just fine -- even if we need more proof, as we can trust fellow dictators to close ranks on a story like this. Although those nicely-sharpened pencils in the photo can't tell us whether they were sharpened on March 28 of this year or 10 years ago, the difference in the shades of wall paper between Karimov's picture and the picture of the minister could hold a clue to a more favourable presentation.
So yeah, we get it that news is so hard to get out of Uzbekistan that you study wallpaper in official state photos for clues. That's my point -- about how absurd it can get. And seemingly Trilling's -- you can't trust biased NGo critics of Karimov.
His blog post falls flat, however, because EurasiaNet is essentially yet another NGO, funded by Soros like all the other NGOs in this field, and as biased as they can be in its selectivity. That's why you have to ask why this hit job was so necessary.
Yeah, we get it that the emigres have an axe to grind, and NGOs like CPJ, even if very careful -- and they were, with this story! -- can report rumors without any facts behind them as they seek to make a larger advocacy point about the awful treatment of journalists in jail in Uzbekistan.
But hey, when it comes to an aging and not-so-healthy dictator in a closed society, that's okay to do, you know? Even Trilling admits that it's hard to get news out of this society.
Trilling also too hastily dismisses CPJ's all-important second piece of information from the Kazah opposition newspaper Republika that probably convinced them to run with the story -- that Karimov's daughter had rushed back home. To counter that perfectly legitimate take on the daughter's travel, Trilling makes it seem like as UNESCO's diplomat from Uzbekistan, that she would go home frequently and we shouldn't read meaning into every little trip. Huh? No, she wouldn't. She lives in Paris. And with good reason, because there is no more grand business for her or her more infamous sister, Gulnara, inside Uzbekistan as there once was.
And with the wonders of email and Skype, she can keep in touch with her minders -- such as they are -- in the government back home and of course her father and other relatives and doesn't need to physically return home for instructions -- that in fact she'd get from the Uzbek ambassador in Paris in any event, most likely, if necessary (it's pretty much a ceremonial job).
There's also trouble enough in the Karimov empire even without heart attacks.
We all get it about Muhammad Solih. I have no relationship to him or any particular use from him, and have never even met him, as far as I recall. I think he's been sly at times in portraying him as opposition to Karimov without explaining the theocratic Islamist tendencies he represents in that opposition. (BTW, the "People's Movement of Uzbekistan' is a mainly collapsed and failed umbrella movement that he tried to start; he was originally known as the head of the opposition Erk or "Freedom" Party).
But this is par for the course with such regimes. The oppositions these regimes get are often as bad as, or worse, than the regimes themselves -- a fact that those regimes never tire of informing you -- and gleefully so. They like to keep things that way, in fact, and at times artificially incite it. They especially love to keep the groups quarelling with each other -- and for good measure, in the case of Uzbekistan, there seem to have been not only dirty tricks and discrediting and intimidation campaigns, but even assassinations of opposition figures abroad.
The Uzbek opposition isn't unmindful of the capacities for anonymous social media to do its work -- but hey, so is the MNB or secret police of Uzbekistan.
I instantly thought of another "anatomy of a rumour" that David Trilling in fact exploited to knock on the opposition and the human rights activists, instead of even conceding that there was just as much a chance that the intelligence agencies planted it as the opposition.
That was the story of the "suicide student" in Uzbekistan who existed only on Facebook, as it happens. I took part in directly by reporting it skeptically and fully -- unlike Sarah Kendzior of Registan.net who reported it from her perch as fact -- and weeped for the woman who was killed by telling too much about herself on Facebook, supposedly.
I reported on the story as one that the human rights groups in Uzbekistan were researching in good faith -- after all it sounded serious -- a woman studying abroad is summoned for interrogation when she went home, and threatened, and then winds up committing suicide. Say, Registan not only reported that one faithfully and breathlessly, in ways they never report on human rights stories most of the time, just like they reported on the threats of the MNB against two students they adopted. When Kendzior did concede it was a hoax, both her post and the numerous nasty comments under it took the regime's perspective
When Trilling's "freelancer" (and you know who you are!) then turned in an astoundingly bad-faith piece on this hoax blaming soley the opposition -- and worse, claiming that a human rights activist, Elena Urlayeva, was "gullible," I sought to dispel this hit job. I was stunned at the curious willingness to believe a known intelligence-related publication uzmetronom.com as a source -- and creduously, as they claimed that instantly, they had accessed not only Uzbek authorities -- understandable, given their role as a tip sheet for such authorities -- but German border authorities, a stretch even for a government somewhat disposed to be friends with Uzbekistan for the sake of their military base in Termez.
I had to wonder about that -- but certainly there was never any reason to trash Urlayeva, who was just doing her job and who exhibited extraordinary persistence in researching this story on the ground, where it mattered (unlike all the other swaggering Western journos) and who herself ultimately pronounced it as a hoax -- as the story continued to live, through other odd permutations involving RFE/RL, BBC, and a strange couple bearing the tale -- with the woman finally denouncing her partner as an intelligence agent.
There, too, Registan rushed to tell us all it was the opposition, if not Salih, others, and never conceded that it could just as likely be intelligence operatives stirring up trouble -- the claim of the agent who is sent to assassinate someone and then turns to support him against the regime is an old, old meme in this region and in the KGB-style operations. We may never know. But there's no reason to impugn the opposition or the human rights activists in these stories, as there is no evidence that they concocted it, and in fact researched it and ran it to ground. Would the opposition be really stupid enough to make a fake FB page with a fake (and strange) occupation as working for their organization (!) and claiming the person was interrogated and killed themselves when there was no body and no evidence, and they'd only be shown up as fakers? Why would they deliberately do that to themselves?
In this story of the heart-attack, we may never know, but again, you have to ask: why would the opposition put out a story easily shown to be untrue if a) they really believed it to be true b) merely reported what sources they thought were reliable told them? Couldn't it just as likely be Karimov's rivals inside the regime in Tashkent, who surely exist? Trilling's implication here as with the suicide story was to imply that if all sources lead to Solih, he is "making up stuff". And maybe he is. But showing him as the source of a rumour hasn't achieved the "anatomy" that Trilling imagines. It just shows that exile leaders believe stories told them, or feel they need to publicize them. It's not like Karimov is young and in the pink of health.
Zakon.kz, an independent Kazakh website which Trilling tries to slam as yet another gullible purveyor of Solih-based rumours in fact ran a story (that Trilling links to!) with the headline "President's Daughter Denies Rumours of His Heart Attack; In Fact He's Dancing". Trilling did not speak Russian a year ago -- he may have learned more of it in the last year. He should know enough, even using Google-translator (which is what all the non-Russian-speaking reporters at EurasiaNet do) to see that the headline is not about purveying a Solih rumor, but the opposite. The story is in fact about a heated Twitter exchange that @realgoogoosha -- Karimova -- had with someone who questioned her about her father's status -- she said he was dancing at Novruz. To be sure, we don't seem to have the kind of lovely state TV footage of Karimov dancing that we had last year, that also showed our own Amb. George Krol dancing at the mass Novruz event.
Says Trilling:
That’s when the rumor really took off. Who went next isn’t clear, but it’s now all over dozens of Russian-language sites covering the former Soviet Union – mostly verbatim from Solih. Today Vechernii Bishkek cites Zakon.kz in its lede, noting that another source has come forward. But the Zakon.kz report cites Solih and Rosbalt (so Solih) and Newsru.com, which cites Solih. So Vechernii Bishkek's second source is via Solih.
Here's what else Zakon.kz says -- hardly sounding like the dupes Trilling implies:
Сведения об инфаркте Каримова распространил сайт «Народное движение Узбекистана». Информация была не раз опровергнута (в частности, информированным источником РИА «Новости»), однако один из главных политических оппонентов нынешнего президента настаивает на версии сердечного приступа.
The news about Karimov's heart attack was disseminated by the site "Popular Movement of Uzbekistan". The information has been repeatedly rebutted (including by the information source RIA Novosti); however, one of the main political opponents of the current president has insisted on the story of the heart attack.
CPJ merely took the opportunity to ask questions about media freedom in any event and clearly state that rumours were swirling. So why the hit job on them? Not for the first time from the Friends of Registan crowd either, as CPJ suffered a savaging by Joshua Foust merely for reporting on the way in which the US administration differentiates between Belarus and Uzbekistan in its advocacy.
In this case, Trilling could have called up his fellow Soros-funded NGO and asked for a comment and clarification before making it seem as if they are bad journalists. They aren't. They are reporting on what regional media is saying and making it clear that it is only that -- reports, allegations.
So this sort of snark from a swaggering non-profit reporter who himself isn't in Uzbekistan just doesn't seem merited, given in fact how CPJ and its sources, which Trilling mischaracterized, really told the story:
CPJ cites Kazakhstan’s Respublika, which cites, you guessed it, Solih. And Rosbalt. So Solih. Respublika adds that Karimov’s younger daughter (the one who sued a French newspaper for calling her a “dictator’s daughter”), Lola Karimova-Tillyaeva, has rushed home in recent days. (As Uzbekistan’s permanent representative to UNESCO, Karimova-Tillyaeva presumably visits Uzbekistan from time to time.) CPJ also cites Lenta.ru, which cites Solih and Rosbalt.So, in other words, we have Solih – a Karimov rival who fled Uzbekistan almost 20 years ago – as the only source. Unfortunately, that's how we get a lot of our news out of tightly controlled Uzbekistan these days: from single sources who are often abroad.
When the word comes about Karimov's real illness or demise, it may be from these single sources who are most devoted to watching and most stand to benefit from transition -- so it's not somehow inappropriate to listen to them and report on what they say. And neither regional opposition newspapers or CPJ did anything wrong.
As for this Church Lady admonition at the end -- one has to marvel at that sort of strange chiding given the numerous pieces gleefully enjoying the dictator's daughter's demise and of course speculating on the succession -- including one I co-authored with an OSI program director at his behest more than a year ago.
Certainly, Karimov’s incapacitation or death would be big news, possibly ushering in a struggle for power. Until we see the man in person, there’s no sure-fire way to confirm that something isn’t up. But the sourcing on the heart-attack rumors is desperately thin. It’s almost like someone is wishing Karimov would have a heart attack.
Let me also point out that in Russian, as the language this might get reported in anywhere along the chain, "serdechny pristup" doesn't mean necessarily a heart attack as we understand it. Many's the Russian friend we've had who would tell us in the morning about their "heart spell" using this term, who might even call from a hospital, but by evening be available for hopping around bars or restaurants, smoking furiously. Karimov may have only felt faint if he danced at Novruz.
EurasiaNet turns out stuff like this so they can seem "balanced" and go on pretending they aren't an advocacy operation. I've never understood the need to do this, given that they are a nonprofit funded from a single source, and it's okay to be a "community journalist" or a page where a lot of "citizen journalists" have their say. If you want to be hard-nosed about the five Ws, you'd go to work for AFP or AP or Reuters, but Trilling prefers to have a safety Eurasianet.
I can just hear Justin Burke and the other EurasiaNet editors and managers grumping that they are a professional news operation and can't be expected to just cut and paste press releases from avid NGO colleagues who might be a little more eager than they are to report the demise of dictators (if Central Asia were just another region, George Soros would have no reason to support a nonprofit news agency about it, and indeed he may be expected, like other funders and the US government, to shift his focus from this region after US troops leave to China and the Middle East along with the other pivoters of the world.)
Yet they are selective in their exposes -- this gotcha was apparently too glee-producing to pass up, but EurasiaNet never criticizes Human Rights Watch, e.g. the months and months of silence they maintained as their office in Tashkent was put under pressure and finally expelled -- indeed, I was asked to observe an embargo on this development. EurasiaNet writes about reports on itself or Soros operations abroad as funded by Soros, but they never write that HRW has a $100 million gift from Soros, and is Soros-funded like themselves for work in Central Asia.
In fact, if there were a disclaimer about every Soros-funded operation featured in EurasiaNet, the world might see it for what it is, a foundation newsletter about events in the field. And it's okay to be such a thing, and I myself was once proud to work for such an entity. Yet some of the swaggering journalists there have greater aspirations and can shore up their own flagging egos over the fact that they don't work in "real" commercial news operations by stepping on other NGOs.
The reporters at EurasiaNet are also not above merely conveying the official media as proof that the opposition and NGOs are "lying" -- even though we have far less grounds to believe them, knowing of their constant manipulations.
