AP News, October 31st, 2007
The Kyrgyz Interior Ministry alleged Tuesday that an independent journalist killed last week in this turbulent ex-Soviet nation was linked to Islamic militants, an accusation his former employer dismissed as "ravings."
The ministry said in a statement released to the media that Alisher Saipov, who was shot dead by an unknown gunman last week in the southern city of Osh, had ties to the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, a banned militant group responsible for several bombings across Central Asia.
It claimed that Saipov had received funds from the movement and provided shelter to militants who fled Uzbekistan in the aftermath of a bloody government crackdown on protesters in May 2005.
Daniil Kislov, editor of Ferghana.ru, an online magazine focusing on Central Asia, who had employed Saipov since 2004, dismissed the ministry's statement as "ravings and blunt lies" and said the Uzbek authorities appeared to be behind the accusation.
"This is propaganda of the Uzbek political establishment expressed through Kyrgyz law enforcement," Kislov told The Associated Press.
Kislov joined a chorus of analysts and journalists in Kyrgyzstan who have blamed Saipov's slaying on the government of neighboring Uzbekistan, whose authoritarian President Islam Karimov has cracked down on dissent and muzzled independent media.
The political climate in Kyrgyzstan is much more liberal than in Uzbekistan, where long-ruling Karimov is seen as one of the most repressive leaders in former Soviet Central Asia.
Saipov, 26, edited the Uzbek language newspaper Siesat (Politics), which harshly criticized Karimov's policies. He helped many of the Uzbek refugees who fled to southern Kyrgyzstan after an uprising in Andijan that ended in massacre, finding them housing and putting them in touch with the U.N. refugee agency.
Survivors and human rights groups say at least 750 people were killed in Andijan, but the Uzbek government insists the death toll was 187 and has blamed Islamic militants for fomenting the violence.
The Kyrgyz government statement also said Saipov's killers had been identified and were being sought, but did not say who they were.
Saipov previously worked for the U.S.-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and Voice of America.
