July 23, 2014 at 2:10 p.m.
Trying times in Osh (2/11/04)
Dear Reader
Chances are, you haven’t heard the latest out of Osh.
Chances are, you don’t even know where Osh is.
It’s a city of about 210,000 souls in southern Kyrgyzstan in the heart of the Ferghana Valley, a piece of real estate rich in history and agricultural fertility.
It’s a confusing sort of place, where ethnicity tends to trump nationality, a place with a teeming bazaar where any American would be wise to keep one hand on his passport and the other on his wallet.
It’s also a place where the practice of journalism gets tough.
That’s where the Osh Media Support Center plays an important role. It’s a non-governmental organization with funding from places like the U.S. and Europe. One of its backers has been the Swiss government, which takes a special interest in Kyrgyzstan because they’re both mountainous countries, one developed and one undeveloped.
The media support center has computers for journalists to use, along with intermittent Internet access.
There’s a meeting room for seminars and gatherings. And there’s a plentiful supply of the region’s papers so reporters can keep up on what’s going on.
At any given time, journalists can be found there doing research, writing articles, or arguing over politics.
All that changed last week, though it’s too soon to say whether the change will be permanent.
In the early morning hours last Wednesday, two masked men assaulted a security guard at the media support center. They threatened journalists on hand with bodily harm, then made off with computers, hard drives, diskettes of data, and at least one digital camera.
Thieves?
Maybe. But there’s an even better chance that the masked intruders were looking for something special, information or data that they didn’t want to see the light of day.
The good news is that they were unable to get into a secure room which remained under lock and key. My guess is that Ernis, the director, had the key under his pillow at home.
The bad news is they’ll probably be back.
In that part of the world, it seems, the bad guys always come back.
Aside from the guard, no one was hurt in the incident. And I’m sure my journalist friends there — Almaz and Kamil and Alishear — would insist that they won’t be cowed.
But I suspect there would be a hint of doubt in their voices, a nervousness that wasn’t there before, a suspicion that a difficult climate had just become more hazardous.[[In-content Ad]]
Chances are, you don’t even know where Osh is.
It’s a city of about 210,000 souls in southern Kyrgyzstan in the heart of the Ferghana Valley, a piece of real estate rich in history and agricultural fertility.
It’s a confusing sort of place, where ethnicity tends to trump nationality, a place with a teeming bazaar where any American would be wise to keep one hand on his passport and the other on his wallet.
It’s also a place where the practice of journalism gets tough.
That’s where the Osh Media Support Center plays an important role. It’s a non-governmental organization with funding from places like the U.S. and Europe. One of its backers has been the Swiss government, which takes a special interest in Kyrgyzstan because they’re both mountainous countries, one developed and one undeveloped.
The media support center has computers for journalists to use, along with intermittent Internet access.
There’s a meeting room for seminars and gatherings. And there’s a plentiful supply of the region’s papers so reporters can keep up on what’s going on.
At any given time, journalists can be found there doing research, writing articles, or arguing over politics.
All that changed last week, though it’s too soon to say whether the change will be permanent.
In the early morning hours last Wednesday, two masked men assaulted a security guard at the media support center. They threatened journalists on hand with bodily harm, then made off with computers, hard drives, diskettes of data, and at least one digital camera.
Thieves?
Maybe. But there’s an even better chance that the masked intruders were looking for something special, information or data that they didn’t want to see the light of day.
The good news is that they were unable to get into a secure room which remained under lock and key. My guess is that Ernis, the director, had the key under his pillow at home.
The bad news is they’ll probably be back.
In that part of the world, it seems, the bad guys always come back.
Aside from the guard, no one was hurt in the incident. And I’m sure my journalist friends there — Almaz and Kamil and Alishear — would insist that they won’t be cowed.
But I suspect there would be a hint of doubt in their voices, a nervousness that wasn’t there before, a suspicion that a difficult climate had just become more hazardous.[[In-content Ad]]
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