AP News, October 24th, 2007
A prominent independent journalist with close ties to the opposition to the authoritarian regime in neighboring Uzbekistan was shot to death in southern Kyrgyzstan on Wednesday, an official said.
An unknown gunman fired three shots at Alisher Saipov at close range as he was leaving his office in the city of Osh, regional Gov. Jantoro Satybaldiyev told The Associated Press. Saipov died on the spot, he said.
Saipov, 26, was a founder of the Uzbek-language newspaper Siyosat, or Politics, which focused on political affairs in Uzbekistan.
Kyrgyzstan's Osh region borders Uzbekistan and has a large ethnic Uzbek population. The political climate in Kyrgyzstan is much more liberal than in Uzbekistan, where long-ruling President Islam Karimov is seen as one of the most repressive in former Soviet Central Asia.
Shakhida Yakup, an exiled Uzbek opposition activist, said Saipov was involved the past two weeks in organizing meetings of Uzbeks in Osh to discuss Uzbekistan's presidential election in December. Karimov, who has been in power 18 years, is expected to seek another seven-year term.
Saipov helped many of the Uzbek refugees who fled to southern Kyrgyzstan in the aftermath of a May 2005 bloody crackdown on an uprising in the Uzbek city of Andijan, finding them housing and putting them in touch with the U.N. refugee agency.
The journalist previously worked for the U.S.-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and Voice of America.
In Washington, the Voice of America described Saipov as a tireless reporter with deep knowledge of the region he covered — the volatile Ferghana Valley that straddles Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan and is a hotbed of Islamic fundamentalism.
"We call for a full and complete investigation of the circumstances surrounding this tragedy," said James K. Glassman, chairman of the Broadcasting Board of Governors, the U.S. government agency that oversees the Voice of America.
