UzLand
04-10-2007, 08:34 AM
JOURNALIST’S CONFESSION: I WANT TO PAY TAXES!
Monday, 09 April 2007
I am holding a little pack of Uzbek sums and thinking of my desire to go voluntarily to the tax authorities to pay taxes. I am afraid that I would be charged, as Deutsche Welle journalist Natasha Bushuyeva, with tax evasion. However, I cannot do it, because I do not have accreditation, which means I cannot work! The situation is like a vicious circle, but quite usual for Islam Karimov’s “animal farm”.
A journalist without Uzbek Foreign Ministry accreditation for Uznews.net
I am a journalist, but I have not obtained accreditation from the Uzbek Foreign Ministry. I have been cooperating with a foreign publication for about two years now, writing for it from Tashkent and sometimes managing to go to the regions, which I do not like at all.
Villagers can immediately see a stranger in me and treat me with mistrust and fear, whereas police officers with their impudent mugs immediately start picking on me. Usually, in order to get rid of them I allocate special funds in my budget for bribing officials or get stocked up with cigarettes.
Eighteen months ago the publication I work for submitted documents to the Uzbek Foreign Ministry to accredit me as its correspondent in Uzbekistan. My country generated interest to them after the Andijan events when the crackdown of a peaceful rally in this town made headlines in the foreign media.
That was not the best time to deal with the ministry’s press service. As far as I understand, at that time the Uzbek Foreign Ministry was solving the completely opposite task - getting rid of foreign journalists who were already operating in the country and local journalists who worked for foreign media outlets.
Our request was ignored for very long. My fearful attempts to telephone the ministry’s press service on 132 05 41 to get through to the rude and arrogant aide to the spokesman, Ishnur Jabbarov, or directly the spokesman, Ilhom Zakirov, who learnt to outperform his aide in dealing with journalists rudely always ended in an unpleasant feeling of being insulted and humiliated.
“No, there is nothing for you so far, telephone us later,” Ishnur Jabbarov answered me. “We will contact you as soon as there will be a decision,” spokesman Zakirov muttered with anger. They did it as if journalists had long been listed by this establishment as the lowest creatures – piteous reptiles – that deserved no respect.
During my contacts with the Foreign Ministry’s press service, I wanted to shout at them every time: “Hey, you! I do not ask you to do charity, but you should do what you have to do in this job! And if someone has to be a little arrogant it should be me because I do not serve the bloody regime like you!”
However, I had to put up with it, because accreditation became vital after the Uzbek Cabinet of Ministers’ resolution “On endorsing the basic rules for professional activities of correspondents of foreign media” adopted on 24 February 2006.
This resolution, signed by the country’s Prime Minister Shavkat Mirziyayev, imposed a ban on local journalists’ cooperation with foreign media without Uzbek Foreign Ministry accreditation.
Article 22 of this resolution says: “The professional activities of citizens of the Republic of Uzbekistan as representatives of foreign media outlets who have not received accreditation from the Foreign Ministry of the Republic of Uzbekistan are banned and entail liability in line with the legislation of the Republic of Uzbekistan.”
In addition to this article, one of my favourite articles, Article 21, says that accredited foreign correspondent “are banned from interfering in internal affairs of the Republic Uzbekistan”.
A question arises: is it interference in internal affairs to report about the Andijan massacre? Foreign Minister Vladimir Norov has repeatedly told the European Union boldly that it should not dare to interfere in Uzbekistan’s internal affairs when it concerned an international investigation into the Andijan massacre.
What can be proven is that in the parallel universe of Uzbekistan where everything, like in George Orwell’s “Animal Farm”, is upside down and they lie to you for 24 hours a day that black is white and vice versa. Where, according to account reports, milk yields and grain harvest are growing, whereas poor animals feel that they are forced to work more for worse forage so that they start starving.
Giving up my attempts to get accreditation, I stopped telephoning the ministry’s press service which, despite Ilhom Zakirov’s promises, had never telephoned me back. Neither have I received any written explanation as why I was not granted accreditation.
These days I am continuing to write, but to be honest, not that often as I would like to and not always about what I want. I am afraid of disclosing myself, because the power-wielding apparatus of the dictator is working day and night in search of those who are managing to spread true information about Uzbekistan.
In essence, the country has imposed a ban on independent journalism. At the same time, I am not known very well so that my disappearance, an attack on me or even my arrest to create an international scandal with an immediate refugee status for me in the West.
That is why I want to try to observe the Uzbek law to deprive the authorities of excuses to pick on me. I want to pay taxes, but how will I go to tax bodies? What will I tell them? Will I say: “Here is $300 I was paid in February from a foreign newspaper I write for”? So that they immediately bring me to account for violating the Cabinet of Ministers’ resolution for working without accreditation. But they are not issuing accreditation to me…
This is a vicious circle. Should I find another job? You know, jobs do not lie on the floor in Uzbekistan. People from all of the country’s regions have already gone to become almost slaves in Kazakhstan and Russia. Those who had good specialities and brains had left the country long ago or are leaving now, having lost the last hope.
I do not want to change my occupation. I want to be a journalist. But I know that I am not Karimov’s former adviser Ismail Jurabekov who, as the Uzbek Prosecutor-General’s Office claimed, was charged with destroying the country’s agriculture and bringing multimillion damages to the country, but who was acquitted without even being investigated.
I am not Kozim Tulyaganov – the former deputy prime minister, mayor of Tashkent and governor of Tashkent Region – who returned several millions he stole from the country to buy himself a suspended sentence. I am not governor of Andijan Region Saydullo Begaliyev who was charged with leading people to the Andijan uprising which ended in the massacre was acquitted in court.
I do not have anything to do with any corrupt official or accomplice of Islam Karimov’s regime.
They will seriously question me, as an ordinary journalist who is living for fees. But I am sitting in my Tashkent flat and looking at the deserted city which is getting wet in a spring rain, at water currents which are hitting my window and I am holding a pack of Uzbek sums.
http://www.uznews.net
Monday, 09 April 2007
I am holding a little pack of Uzbek sums and thinking of my desire to go voluntarily to the tax authorities to pay taxes. I am afraid that I would be charged, as Deutsche Welle journalist Natasha Bushuyeva, with tax evasion. However, I cannot do it, because I do not have accreditation, which means I cannot work! The situation is like a vicious circle, but quite usual for Islam Karimov’s “animal farm”.
A journalist without Uzbek Foreign Ministry accreditation for Uznews.net
I am a journalist, but I have not obtained accreditation from the Uzbek Foreign Ministry. I have been cooperating with a foreign publication for about two years now, writing for it from Tashkent and sometimes managing to go to the regions, which I do not like at all.
Villagers can immediately see a stranger in me and treat me with mistrust and fear, whereas police officers with their impudent mugs immediately start picking on me. Usually, in order to get rid of them I allocate special funds in my budget for bribing officials or get stocked up with cigarettes.
Eighteen months ago the publication I work for submitted documents to the Uzbek Foreign Ministry to accredit me as its correspondent in Uzbekistan. My country generated interest to them after the Andijan events when the crackdown of a peaceful rally in this town made headlines in the foreign media.
That was not the best time to deal with the ministry’s press service. As far as I understand, at that time the Uzbek Foreign Ministry was solving the completely opposite task - getting rid of foreign journalists who were already operating in the country and local journalists who worked for foreign media outlets.
Our request was ignored for very long. My fearful attempts to telephone the ministry’s press service on 132 05 41 to get through to the rude and arrogant aide to the spokesman, Ishnur Jabbarov, or directly the spokesman, Ilhom Zakirov, who learnt to outperform his aide in dealing with journalists rudely always ended in an unpleasant feeling of being insulted and humiliated.
“No, there is nothing for you so far, telephone us later,” Ishnur Jabbarov answered me. “We will contact you as soon as there will be a decision,” spokesman Zakirov muttered with anger. They did it as if journalists had long been listed by this establishment as the lowest creatures – piteous reptiles – that deserved no respect.
During my contacts with the Foreign Ministry’s press service, I wanted to shout at them every time: “Hey, you! I do not ask you to do charity, but you should do what you have to do in this job! And if someone has to be a little arrogant it should be me because I do not serve the bloody regime like you!”
However, I had to put up with it, because accreditation became vital after the Uzbek Cabinet of Ministers’ resolution “On endorsing the basic rules for professional activities of correspondents of foreign media” adopted on 24 February 2006.
This resolution, signed by the country’s Prime Minister Shavkat Mirziyayev, imposed a ban on local journalists’ cooperation with foreign media without Uzbek Foreign Ministry accreditation.
Article 22 of this resolution says: “The professional activities of citizens of the Republic of Uzbekistan as representatives of foreign media outlets who have not received accreditation from the Foreign Ministry of the Republic of Uzbekistan are banned and entail liability in line with the legislation of the Republic of Uzbekistan.”
In addition to this article, one of my favourite articles, Article 21, says that accredited foreign correspondent “are banned from interfering in internal affairs of the Republic Uzbekistan”.
A question arises: is it interference in internal affairs to report about the Andijan massacre? Foreign Minister Vladimir Norov has repeatedly told the European Union boldly that it should not dare to interfere in Uzbekistan’s internal affairs when it concerned an international investigation into the Andijan massacre.
What can be proven is that in the parallel universe of Uzbekistan where everything, like in George Orwell’s “Animal Farm”, is upside down and they lie to you for 24 hours a day that black is white and vice versa. Where, according to account reports, milk yields and grain harvest are growing, whereas poor animals feel that they are forced to work more for worse forage so that they start starving.
Giving up my attempts to get accreditation, I stopped telephoning the ministry’s press service which, despite Ilhom Zakirov’s promises, had never telephoned me back. Neither have I received any written explanation as why I was not granted accreditation.
These days I am continuing to write, but to be honest, not that often as I would like to and not always about what I want. I am afraid of disclosing myself, because the power-wielding apparatus of the dictator is working day and night in search of those who are managing to spread true information about Uzbekistan.
In essence, the country has imposed a ban on independent journalism. At the same time, I am not known very well so that my disappearance, an attack on me or even my arrest to create an international scandal with an immediate refugee status for me in the West.
That is why I want to try to observe the Uzbek law to deprive the authorities of excuses to pick on me. I want to pay taxes, but how will I go to tax bodies? What will I tell them? Will I say: “Here is $300 I was paid in February from a foreign newspaper I write for”? So that they immediately bring me to account for violating the Cabinet of Ministers’ resolution for working without accreditation. But they are not issuing accreditation to me…
This is a vicious circle. Should I find another job? You know, jobs do not lie on the floor in Uzbekistan. People from all of the country’s regions have already gone to become almost slaves in Kazakhstan and Russia. Those who had good specialities and brains had left the country long ago or are leaving now, having lost the last hope.
I do not want to change my occupation. I want to be a journalist. But I know that I am not Karimov’s former adviser Ismail Jurabekov who, as the Uzbek Prosecutor-General’s Office claimed, was charged with destroying the country’s agriculture and bringing multimillion damages to the country, but who was acquitted without even being investigated.
I am not Kozim Tulyaganov – the former deputy prime minister, mayor of Tashkent and governor of Tashkent Region – who returned several millions he stole from the country to buy himself a suspended sentence. I am not governor of Andijan Region Saydullo Begaliyev who was charged with leading people to the Andijan uprising which ended in the massacre was acquitted in court.
I do not have anything to do with any corrupt official or accomplice of Islam Karimov’s regime.
They will seriously question me, as an ordinary journalist who is living for fees. But I am sitting in my Tashkent flat and looking at the deserted city which is getting wet in a spring rain, at water currents which are hitting my window and I am holding a pack of Uzbek sums.
http://www.uznews.net