Suren Babayan from Dashtavan, in the southern Armenian province of Ararat, has always paid his water bills on time. Believing that punctuality and precision pay off, Babayan keeps copies of every payments made from 2004 to today as proof of his reliability. So when Babayan recently received a letter from the Armenia Water and Sewerage Company informing him that he had an outstanding water bill balance of between $260 and $1300 -- in a nation where average annual incomes hover at just over $5000 per year -- the Dashtavan villager was a little concerned.

“We have paid every month. We have not skipped a single month,” Babayan says.

Babayan’s is not a unique case in Armenia, where one of three local state-owned (but French-managed) water suppliers has subjected hundreds of households to punishing arrears. In extreme cases, the company has gained notoriety for freezing the assets of villagers and raiding the pensions of elderly customers in order to collect what it claimed were unpaid water bills.

Local uproar over the company’s practices led journalists from RFE/RL’s Armenian Service, Radio Azatutyun, into an extensive investigation of Armenia Water and Sewerage. Radio Azatutyun collected the stories of dozens of villagers like Babayan, and consulted lawyers and experts who found that some of the company’s policies were in violation of Armenian law.

RFE/RL’s reports quickly drew the attention of Patrick Lorin, Armenia Water and Sewerage’s CEO, who offered to sit for a full-length interview with Azatutyun to comment on the growing controversy. But Azatutyun editors in Yerevan had another idea: why not facilitate a town hall meeting between Lorin and his irate customers? So on February 3, with cameras in tow, Lorin met face to face in Dashtavan with scores of villagers who accused his company of breaking the law.

At the meeting, Lorin was joined by the regional Ararat governor, Edik Barseghian, and top representatives of the company’s local branches. Lorin and other company representatives maintained that the arrears charges levied against the villagers of Dashtavan were valid. But Governor Barseghian pressed his constituents’ claims, alleging that the company retroactively revised its estimates of household water consumption. The meeting changed Lorin’s mind; he promised that his company would recalculate the villagers’ bills.

An advisor to the regional government told RFE/RL last week that local administrators would help villagers to file their own complaints against the utility for illegally seizing pension checks to pay for the alleged arrears. The victory for villagers in Dashtavan has raised hopes in other rural communities that their similar arrears liabilities may be erased.

-- Kristyna Dzmuranova

Abbas Atilay, a photo correspondent for RFE/RL’s Azeri Service and Torokul Doorov, a correspondent for RFE/RL’s Kyrgyz Service, have won three photography awards from Transition Online (TOL) for depictions of  “Everyday Life” and “Arts and Culture." Atilay's submission also won TOL's overall photography award for 2011. Transitions Online is a nonprofit journalism foundation devoted to improving news coverage of the former Soviet Union.

Atilay's photo of a villager holding a goat in the remote village of Khinalug, in northern Azerbaijan, was awarded the competition's "Everyday Life" prize. Around 2,000 residents from a distinct ethnic group, speaking their own language, live in Khinalug. When Atilay took his photo in April 2011, villagers had just returned to their homes in the mountains after wintering in the lowlands. 

Radio Azattyk's Doorov's photograph of older women giving their blessing at a circumcision party in the remote village of Kok-Tash in Kyrgyzstan's Batken region won first place in the competion's "Arts and Culture" category. 

Based in Baku, Atilay has in the past been subject to abuse by the Azeri authorities for filming and photographing protests in Baku. Abbas has traveled to some of the most remote places in the Caucasus, visited Iran’s bazaars, and documented modern life in Azerbaijan's rural villages. For more of Abbas’s photo galleries, visit RFE/RL's Facebook weekly gallery, and view Abbas' sound slide shows on Radio Azadliq’s website.

Also check out Radio Azattyk to see Doorov’s photo galleries, which show off his winning photo of a Kyrgyz circumcision celebration ceremony and other depictions of Kyrgyz culture.

-- Deana Kjuka

This practice, known as "bride kidnapping," is endemic to Central Asia and the Caucasus. Now, after in-depth reporting by RFE/RL’s Kyrgyz Service, Radio Azattyk, new legislation on the practice is working its way through the Kyrgyz parliament.

Radio Azattyk Director Venera Djumataeva explains that her station stirred public discourse through its round-table discussions and stories of kidnapped brides. 

“As a result of our discussions, and reports, the Kyrgyz Parliament’s committee on health care, social policy, labour and migration initiated a draft bill penalizing imams for conducting the Nikah ceremony without any official marriage registration,” Djumataeva says.

Bride kidnapping is usually followed by an informal blessing of the marriage by a religious official. However, there is often no official registration of the marriage, meaning that many kidnapped Kyrgyz wives have no legal rights and are powerless in matters such as domestic abuse and child support.

Radio Azattyk’s impact was acknowledged by the Kyrgyz ombudsman, Tursunbek Akun, who quoted Azattyk’s reports following a public discussion in Bishkek.

The Tradition Myth

Though bride kidnapping is now portrayed as a long tradition, critics say that there is nothing traditional about kidnapping a young woman as a way of forcing her into marriage. In the past, bride kidnapping was a ploy used by couples who wished to elope, providing a convenient excuse for brides whose parents objected to the marriage.

Today, the tradition has acquired less romantic overtones. In many cases, the bride does not give her consent to the marriage, Djumataeva says.

There are also tragic cases. Radio Azattyk reported on two twenty-year-old women who committed suicide in the past two years after they were forced to marry their captors.

Bride kidnapping is a common practice in Kyrgyzstan, with anywhere from 68% to 75% of marriages taking place as a result of this practice according to the Kyz Korgon Institute, a nongovernmental organization that aims to eliminate bride-kidnapping in Kyrgyzstan.

Every year, Radio Azattyk receives a higher number of calls concerning bride kidnappings during the month of June. Djumataeva says the number of bride kidnappings increases during this time period as June marks the end of the school year, meaning 18-year-old girls who have just graduated from high school suddenly become easy targets for bride kidnappings.

Though bride kidnapping is officially a criminal offence in Kyrgyzstan and the criminal code provides for a maximum three-year prison term for the practice, most cases never make it to the courtroom and those few offenders who are tried usually get away with paying a small fine. The bill currently under consideration in the parliament, if passed, would be a small but significant step in Kyrgyzstan’s battle to contain the problem.

(UPDATE: On January 26, the bride kidnapping bill lost support in the parliament due to a provision that could prevent the common yet illegal practice of polygamy.)
-- Deana Kjuka

UPDATE:

The live portion of the chat has ended, but the discussion need not. Go here to read the chat from Friday, and leave a comment or question.

Thank you to all who joined us!

--

Join us today at 2pm EST on Facebook for a discussion on the dangers facing journalists in Pakistan. RFE/RL's Daud Khattak and Committee to Protect Journalists Asia Program Coordinator Bob Dietz will cover the recent killing of VOA stringer Mukarram Khan, how journalists in Pakistan can protect themselves, and why Pakistan has earned the dubious title as "the world's most dangerous place for journalists."

Feel free to join the discussion live, or leave questions or comments here, on our Facebook page, or on Twitter (@RFERL). For a preview of the discussion, listen below to a short interview with Daud Khattak on the nature of threat to journalists in Pakistan.

Daud Khattak discusses dangers to journalists in Pakistan

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-- RFE/RL Communications

When RFE/RL photographer Midhat Poturovic arrived in the small Bosnian town of Osenik in August 2011, he saw what any other visitor would have seen: a village ravaged by violence in the wake of a local population’s attack on Osenik’s Roma population. But then he saw something that many would have missed. “We could see the destruction and the horrible mess,” Poturovic recalls. “One could take hundreds of photos of that. But my attention was drawn to one broken window in particular, where I could see a scared family just in between the pieces of glass. That is how this photo was born.”

Now Poturovic’s compelling photograph -- “Violence Against Roma People” -- has been recognized with the 2011 grand prize for best picture at Sarajevo’s annual “Photography BiH” competition. The event, organized by fotografija.ba,  is supported by the Sarajevo Foundation for Music, Performing and Fine Arts and the Embassy of Spain in Bosnia. Poturovic’s victory was announced at a gala ceremony in a Sarajevo gallery, the New Temple, on January 16, and his is slated to go on exhibit in another Sarajevo gallery, BlackBOX.

​​“This award is huge to me,” Poturovic told “Off Mic” in a recent interview. “I am pleased that the jury recognized the energy I put into my work. It will be a motivator for me to work harder and to become a better photographer.”

Poturovic, 26, has only been at professional photography for four years, and says that his interest in the art is driven by his love for photojournalism. “From day one, I was mostly interested in photography as a document, as a witness to daily events,” Poturovic says. “I was interested in newsy photos. For me the most challenging task is being a witness.”

-- Kristyna Dzmuranova

Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty mourns the passing of Iraj Gorgin, former editor-in-chief of Radio Farda, RFE/RL's Persian-language broadcast service.

Iraj passed away on January 13 after battling illness in Washington, D.C. He will be greatly missed by his former colleagues and many friends in Prague, where he worked from 1998 to 2009.

During his time at RFE/RL, Iraj was instrumental both in the management of Radio Farda and in the launch and operation of its predecessor service, Radio Azadi, where he served as deputy director and acting director. He shaped the style and content of both services, helping them to win strong audience confidence as trusted sources of news and cultural programming.

What Iraj brought to RFE/RL was 50 years of experience as a professional journalist, first in Iran and then in the United States.

Starting in 1957 as a reporter with "Keyhan," a daily newspaper in Tehran, he rapidly moved up in the media world, holding key jobs in print, radio, and television. He worked as the managing director of Radio 2, one of Iran's national radio stations; managing director of the Second Network of National Iranian Radio and Television (NIRT); and editor-in-chief of "Tamasha" magazine, a popular weekly dedicated to the arts, entertainment and literature.

​​During these years, he traveled extensively as a correspondent to cover major world events, once coming under fire along with his cameraman during a war-reporting trip in Cambodia. He also produced a documentary on Iranian artifacts in Russia's Hermitage Museum.

After leaving Iran at the time of the 1979 Islamic Revolution, Iraj moved to California where he became a leading media figure within the Iranian-American community. He founded the first privately owned and independent Persian-language radio, Radio Omid (Hope), and grew it from one hour of broadcasting a day to five. The "Christian Science Monitor" called Radio Omid "The Voice of Reason" within the Iranian Diaspora and the "Los Angeles Times" called it "The Voice of Iranians."

Iraj subsequently founded a bilingual news and culture website and was continually active in community activities. He produced a documentary which continues to raise funds for the Encyclopedia Iranica, an ongoing project at the University of Columbia to create the definitive reference work on Persian culture. He raised more than $350,000 through a television telethon to help the victims of a devastating earthquake in Iran.

During his many years in journalism, Iraj was often sought out to speak at university lectures on Iranian affairs or to comment to the media about events in Iran. He was an articulate source of information on an exceptionally wide range of subjects, partly due to his experience and partly due to his own continuing love of education. He earned a B.A. in Persian Literature at Tehran University, followed by an M.A. in Communications Management at Annenberg School of Communications at the University of Southern California. He also took part in courses on radio and television management in Tokyo, London, Paris, Brussels, Boston and Prague.

Iraj will be remembered for his many achievements at two memorial services at U.S. universities this month.

On January 22, there will be a memorial ceremony in the Howard Frank Auditorium of the University of Maryland, where Iraj regularly attended the Roshan Center for Persian Studies and spoke several times.

On January 29, there will be another memorial at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Iraj is survived by his wife Azam and his son Afshin.

-- Charles Recknagel

Vusula Alibayli and Huseynbala Salimov, correspondents with RFE/RL’s Azerbaijani Service, both won the prestigious "Media Key-2011" award during a January 10 awards ceremony in Baku. Radio Azadliq, as the service is known locally, is the first international news outlet to receive the award, which recognizes excellence in Azerbaijan's domestic media. Previously in 2009, two Radio Azadliq reporters also won a “Media Key” award for their reports exposing corruption and modern women’s issues.

Alibayli, Radio Azadliq’s "queen of comedy," was honored as "Investigative Journalist of the Year" for her reporting on government waste and the plight of illegal migrant workers in Azerbaijan and for her work as the moderator of Azadliq’s satire show, "250 Seconds +." Similar in format to "The Daily Show” in the United States, the show was recognized for “innovation in new media” at last year's "Blogosfer" convention in Azerbaijan.

Salimov, who is a current affairs analyst for Radio Azadliq, won the award for "Political Commentator of the Year." According to Salimov, "The fact that this nomination exists shows that our society is in need of serious journalism, analysis and interpretation of events."

The “Media Key” award is considered to be one of Azerbaijan's most prestigious journalism prizes. It has been awarded since 1997 by the Azerbaijan Union of Journalists, a media advocacy group, and "Yeni Nasil,” or “New Generation,” one of Azerbaijan's most active media advocacy groups.

“The government in Azerbaijan cannot criticize us because we follow professional standards of journalism and stand out within the local media environment,” explains Radio Azadliq’s director, Kenan Aliyev.

Radio Azadliq’s coverage of local issues has garnered international as well as local attention. Radio Azadliq’s reporters risk their lives in order to report on issues that matter to ordinary citizens.

See Radio Azadliq’s Alibayli and Salimov accept their awards in this video of the award ceremony.

-- Deana Kjuka

What happens in Bosnia when a top politician acquires a $380,000 apartment for a mere $600? 

Usually, nothing. But lately Radio Free Europe’s Balkans Service has teamed up with the Sarajevo-based Center for Investigative Journalism (CIN) to uncover the most egregious instances of official corruption across the former Yugoslavia. In a region where many media organizations and judicial systems are reluctant to investigate unpleasant claims about powerful individuals, RFE and CIN provide a rare service: keeping public officials accountable for their actions.

The partnership began in 2009 and has already shed light upon all kinds of shady practises involving top public figures in the Balkans.

Several stories have directly involved Milorad Dodik, the current president of Republika Srpska, Bosnia’s autonomous Serb enclave. In 2005, a local court in Banja Luka -- the capital of Republika Srpska -- acquitted Dodik of charges relating to the misuse of state funds. The case was later reopened and Republika Srpska’s State Investigation and Protection Agency wrote a secret report that exposed Dodik’s abuse of office in the awarding of a contract for Banja Luka’s new governmental headquarters. The report later made its way to CIN’s website.

Other CIN and RFE/RL joint projects have pointed to corruption linking the government to Dodik’s family and associates. In 2009, RFE/RL ran an article disclosing speculative money transfers with state funds that were originally earmarked for local economic development. Out of the assigned budget, a significant amount of money was granted to companies with strong political connections. One large transfer fell into Dodik’s son’s lap and another sizable sum arrived at the account of a Banja Luka newspaper that supports Dodik.    

A Church Official With Business Interests On The Side

CIN has also shed light on the wild ethical practices of the Serbian Orthodox Church, whose Mostar bishop, Gregory Duric, runs a variety of business schemes when he’s not tending to his flock. Unfortunately for Gregory, and the church, the bishop’s business acumen is duller than his talent for navigating ecclesiastical politics: in 2010, his extracurricular entrepreneurial activities ran up debts of approximately $8 million. Perhaps the first bishop ever to put his church under a mortgage, Gregory’s works of wizardry would have gone unnoticed were it not for CIN’s willingness to publicly decry a key executive of one of the Balkans’ most powerful organizations.

Still, influential individuals like Bishop Gregory can usually count on a pass from the region’s shaky legal system, which often fails to investigate or prosecute even the most flagrant allegations of corruption. Nenad Pejic, RFE/RL’s Associate Director of Broadcasting, says that “the courts are not ruled by the law but by the people who are connected.”

The $600 Apartment

A notorious instance of judicial inaction came in 2011 when a Sarajevo court rejected charges against Nedzad Brankovic, Bosnia’s former prime minister, who managed to make an unusually cunning investment by buying an apartment valued at $380,000 for a mere $600. Brankovic’s bargain came as the result of a Bosnian government contract with the country’s largest engineering group, Energoinvest. Together, these two entities agreed on purchasing the aforementioned apartment for $380,000. 46 days later, the real estate was sold to Brankovic for $600, less than 1/600th of its actual price. At the time of the deal, Brankovic was a member of the Bosnian parliament and an Energoinvest executive. 

The list of transparent episodes of corruption goes on, but the local judiciary does not seem to care. Investigative journalists at CIN allege that the Special Prosecutor’s Office of Republika Srpska, established specifically to prosecute Bosnia’s most serious white-collar criminals, fails to fulfill its mission by dropping charges against accused state officials or by abridging their sentences.

In the absence of a legal mechanism for keeping Bosnia’s governments honest, RFE/RL and CIN cooperate to keep the public aware of corruption.

RFE/RL is the only media platform in the region equally interested in broadcasting the misdeeds of public officials from all of the western Balkans’ major regions and interest groups -- Catholic Croats, Muslim Bosniaks, and Orthodox Serbians. Pejic notes, “The local media [in the Balkans] are not interested in any kind of investigative reporting because they are more or less controlled by local mafia or local politicians.” Many local outlets are willing to take a few jabs at opposition politicians, but none are willing to target their own benefactors; instead, they target only those who are not.

It’s precisely for this reason that CIN works exclusively with RFE/RL to produce and broadcast its explosive investigative findings. As the region’s only non-sectarian broadcaster, RFE/RL brings a credibility to bear that no one else in the Balkans can match -- a voice for openness, without fear or favor.

-- Kristyna Dzmuranova

A video of policemen taking bribes in the middle of Baku -- filmed by a correspondent with RFE/RL's Radio Azadliq -- has led to the police officers' expulsion from the Baku police force. Recorded on December 31, the video went viral and immediately drew a reaction from the Azerbaijani government. The short video (above) shows a team of policemen signaling passing cars to stop and then accepting what appears to be a roll of cash followed by a firm handshake between the driver and the policemen.

Ehsan Zahidov, a spokesman for the Ministry of Interior said that the three police sergeants involved in the video were identified by the Ministry and promptly fired. Corruption is rampant in Azerbaijan, and the government has even declared a national campaign to fight the practice. Since the campaign began in 2011, more than 30 policemen have been fired for violations related to corruption according to Kamran Aliyev, an inspector in the Traffic Police Department.

-- Kristyna Dzmuranova & Deana Kjuka

Parvin Mokhtare was just doing what any other mom would do when she took to the airwaves of Radio Farda (RFE/RL’s Persian-language service) to protest the arrest of her son, journalist and human rights activist Kouhyar Goudarzi, who has been imprisoned off and on by the Iranian government for years. Mokhtare was her son’s fiercest advocate, conducting numerous interviews with media outlets in Iran and writing to human rights groups abroad to publicize her son’s case and secure his release.

Now an Iranian court has sentenced Mokhtare to 23 months in prison for her advocacy efforts, which judges said “[insulted] the martyrs and the Supreme Leader.” The decision was handed down in late December, some five months after Mokhtare was arrested by police as a consequence of interviews she gave to Radio Farda and others. Mokhtare was denied the right to a lawyer during the trial.

“She constantly used to update Radio Farda about the situation of detainees and post-election detainees,” Radio Farda’s Mohammad Hossein Boghrati says. “She gave us interviews on how the officials were threatening the families of imprisoned activists.” The veteran Farda journalist adds that Mokhtare provided RFE/RL with “trustworthy info about the court process and judiciary system.”

Mokhtare is now serving time in a prison in Kerman, in southeast Iran. It’s believed that her son is being held in solitary confinement in Iran’s notorious Evin prison, alongside countless other political prisoners.

Despite the fact that journalists and human rights activists are routinely targeted and  imprisoned by Iranian authorities, legal action against family members is highly unusual, even for Iran’s revolutionary courts. Nevertheless, it isn’t unheard of for authorities to briefly jail family members for speaking up about their loved ones.

A case in point: Fatemeh Alvandi, another woman recently punished for fulfilling her maternal role. Alvandi is the mother of Mehdi Mahmoudian, a journalist spending a five-year stretch in solitary confinement for his reports on the abuse and premature death of inmates at Iran’s Kahrizak prison. She was arrested January 2 after speaking out about her son’s ailing health during interviews with foreign-based media, including Radio Farda. Alvandi was released a few hours later with orders not to give any more interviews with the media.

Boghrati explains that there have been “numerous cases in which family members were detained, or even handed down a sentence for the purpose of intimidation.” But the Farda journalist stresses that Mokhtare’s 23-month sentence is a new extreme. “No one has actually been sent to prison for such a long time on such a charge.”

-- Deana Kjuka