Watchdog

RFE/RL has written elsewhere about the disaster in Turkmenistan on July 7, when a series of massive explosions struck a military munitions depot in the town of Abadan, with a population 50,000, located less than 20 kilometers from Ashgabat, the capital.

The explosion killed dozens of people.

But that's not the only thing that's significant about the incident. The deadly explosions also mark the unprecedented emergence of citizen journalism in one of the world's most isolated countries.


Soon after the initial blast, the government shut down the Internet and telephone lines in Abadan. The town was evacuated and completely sealed off to all but emergency services.

Hours went by, but the state-controlled media still hadn't provided any radio or TV reports about the disaster. The only thing that emerged from the authorities was a brief statement:


This sort of thing is par for the course in Turkmenistan. Privately owned media do not exist in the country. TV and radio are tightly controlled by the state, which also closely monitors citizens' contacts with the outside world. Even a disaster like this would normally go unreported.

But this time, events took a different turn. One of the factors was the unprecedented activism of citizen journalists who reported the event to the outside world even as it was still unfolding -- in some cases risking their lives in the process. It's the first time in the history of Turkmenistan that anything like this has happened.

"Smoke reportedly started rising at the depot at 2 p.m. Turkmen time on July 7, and the first explosion took place at 4 p.m.," says Farit Tukhbatulin, head of the Vienna-based Turkmen Initiative for Human Rights, which runs a website with contributions from Turkmen citizen journalists. He says he first received word about two hours after that and posted it on the site. It was soon picked up by other media.

(RFE/RL's Turkmen Service first reported the blast at 5:43 p.m., based on reports from our correspondents and local sources.)

At around 7:30 p.m., EurasiaNet.org presented a more detailed version of the story. The following day, Radio Azatlyk, RFE/RL's Turkmen Service, made unique video footage of the event available (below).



But the reporting really got going with two pictures of the damaged buildings (posted later the same day) on the Turkmen version of the online social chat site teswirler.com.

"People: I just escaped from that place when the explosions started," wrote Jeronimo87, an apparent eyewitness to the explosion, in a comment posted on teswirler.com.

The post continued, "God keep us under his protection from what just happened. An artillery shell fell next to me. I barely escaped even with a car."

Another user, aylale, wrote: "One of the [shells] fell on my relatives' home. Thank God that they were able to escape in time."

Other bloggers described families who'd lost their homes sitting by the side of the road.

There were dozens of other comments posted on the website describing the event, and they've attracted dozens of responses.


This discussion was taking place while official Turkmen media were broadcasting their usual cheery songs and reports glorifying the president and all of his marvelous works. Some of the reporters got the word out from Abadan itself before the local communication networks were shut down. In the hours that followed, they kept the story going by moving to parts of the country where the Internet and mobile phone networks were still functioning.

"I've never seen reporting about an event in the country like this," says Tuhbatulin. "We've never seen anything like the activism of these citizen journalists in Turkmenistan." He calls their reporting "an information war" against government control, and says that "it was a clear victory for them."

By the next morning, despite the official blackout, news of the explosion was everywhere -- just not in the Turkmen media.

Only on July 10, three days after the event, did official media run a report saying that "a fire indeed started at a fireworks warehouse, but later spilled over to the arms depot, leading to the death of 15 people."

This is still fairly far removed from the unofficial version of the story reported by citizen journalists, who say the disaster actually started at the depot and led, in the end, to more than 200 deaths.

But by then it didn't matter what the government had to say. The citizen journalists had already made their point.

What remains to be seen is how the government will respond to its defeat. The authorities could try to adapt to the new reality and implement needed changes in media policy. Or they could try to tighten the screws even further.

-- Muhammad Tahir

It was two years ago that rights worker Natalya Estemirova was kidnapped from outside her home in the Chechen capital, Grozny, and slain with shots to the head and chest.

Now, on the anniversary of her killing -- on July 15, 2009 -- journalists and rights activists inside and outside of Russia say little progress has been made in resolving her murder and are calling for a thorough and impartial investigation into her death.

The Russian rights group Memorial -- Estemirova's employer at the time of her death -- has collaborated with the independent "Novaya gazeta" newspaper and the Paris-based International Federation for Human Rights to conduct its own investigation into the killing of the 50-year-old activist.

Their findings -- presented to Russian President Dmitry Medvedev last week and leaked to the media on July 14 -- suggest that the government investigation is on the wrong track and that the secret services were used to concoct a false version of events to steer attention away from the true killers.

Friederike Behr works in the Moscow office with Amnesty International, one of the rights groups behind a separate press release calling for renewed efforts to fully investigate the murder.

She said the new report didn't put blame on specific authorities but pointed to critical gaps in the investigation -- including DNA evidence found on Estemirova's fingernails and clothes -- that make it impossible to adequately judge who was behind the killing.

"It's not convincingly proven that the current theory published by the investigation committee -- that she was murdered by members of an armed group -- is founded in sufficient evidence," Behr said, "and that with all the other leads suggesting that she was murdered maybe by staff members of law enforcement agencies, that there's really not enough evidence to prove that this version can be excluded."

Medvedev used the first anniversary of Estemirova's killing to announce that authorities had uncovered the killer and were looking for the masterminds behind the attack. Government investigators claim the activist was murdered by Chechen insurgents in retaliation for exposing some of their crimes.

But the new independent report disputes that theory, saying the circumstances of Estemirova's death point to the possible involvement of public officials.

Chechen authorities, including President Ramzan Kadyrov, had publicly criticized Estemirova for her reporting on human rights abuses in the North Caucasus republic, including extrajudicial executions, enforced disappearances, and torture by the Chechen government. Just weeks before her death, Estemirova had exposed a case of extrajudicial killing by local police. Federal investigators, however, have failed to explore any possible role of the police in her killing.

Estemirova had frequently been threatened and harassed for her human rights work. Rachel Denber, who works in the New York office of Human Rights Watch, said the authorities' selective investigation into the murder "raises more questions than it resolves."

"There were very strong circumstances around Estemirova's murder that suggested that there could have been some official involvement," Denber said. "You know, the threats that had been made against Estemirova and others like her, the threats against Memorial, the timing of the threat, the kinds of crimes that Estemirova had been investigating -- all of that pointed to a very strong official interest in seeing some kind of harm done to her."

Rights groups say the Russian government is obligated under both domestic and international law to investigate Estemirova's case properly and prosecute all responsible, regardless of rank or position. Without such a commitment, Denber said, activists like Estemirova continue their work in the North Caucasus "at serious peril."

written by Daisy Sindelar