Digital Freedom of Expression in Uzbekistan

"...D]espite the efforts of the government to control user activity, the internet serves a valuable purpose for Uzbeks willing and able to circumvent state prohibitions."

This paper examines the relationship between political activism and internet freedom in Uzbekistan. It argues that while the internet is a critical tool for political expression, its utility as a tool for activism is challenged both by threats from the government and by fear and apathy among Uzbek internet users. It further discusses how the Uzbek government has responded to these technologies and the problems Uzbeks face when using them for political purposes.

As reported here, as of 2012, "Uzbekistan has the most severe restrictions on internet use in Central Asia. The government uses filters, monitoring, intimidation, and violence to keep people from freely accessing the internet, and justifies these policies under the pretext of protecting national values. Ordinary citizens in Uzbekistan are wary of using the internet for political purposes and practice self-censorship online....The spread of social media and mobile phones has challenged state control over access to information through the internet in Uzbekistan, but has had little effect on political organization or mobilization."

Specific trends in internet access and use are shared here. For example [all footnote numbers removed - please see the full article for data sources]:

• In April 2011, the Uzbekistan Agency for Information and Communication claimed that there were 7,550,000 internet users in Uzbekistan, or 26.5% of the population, with a 93.7% degree of digitalisation across the country. This estimate is in line with World Bank data showing rapid growth in internet use: data from 2009 showed 4,689,000 internet users, up from 2,469,000 in 2008 - an 89% increase in one year.
• According to research conducted by Yosh To'lqin, a youth-oriented branch of the Uzbek Radio Free Europe service, the number of Uzbeks using the social media network Odnoklassniki ("Classmates") grew from 840,056 in February 2011 to over 2 million in December 2011. Mail.ru (or Moy Mir, "My World"), a hybrid email-social media service, grew from 623,536 registered users in Uzbekistan to over 1.5 million users during the same period. Both websites are in Russian and are popular throughout the Commonwealth of Independent States. Statistics from these popular social media networks show that most users are logging on from urban areas. Facebook, while far less popular in Uzbekistan, saw similar growth. Between January and June 2011, the number of Facebook users in Uzbekistan more than doubled to 82,900. More modest growth continued in the latter half of the year, with the service claiming over 107,000 registered users by January 2012.
• In 2009, roughly 2.7 million households had home internet connections, 89,000 of which included broadband. According to a 2010 report from the Uzbek Agency for Communication and Information, 3.36 million people in Uzbekistan access the internet through their mobile phones.
• The government claims that there are 968 internet cafes throughout the country, up from 344 in 2006.
• Blogging is less popular than social media, and newer forms of user-generated content, such as microblogging, podcasting, and videocasting, have yet to take off in Uzbekistan. In the summer of 2011, two Uzbek journalists went on a hunger strike to protest censorship and corruption in Uzbekistan's state-run media and tweeted the details of their strike, but their efforts attracted few followers beyond a small audience of Uzbek dissidents and Western sympathisers.

Given the state of the internet in Uzbekistan, this paper urges support for initiatives aimed at helping Uzbeks read and participate in media. In particular:

1. "Encourage circumvention efforts - Activists should be trained in circumvention software and encryption techniques for different platforms as well as how to secure communications on mobile phones. A comprehensive guide to circumvention tactics should be written in Uzbek and Russian and sent to editors of popular Uzbek websites so that they can distribute it to their followers through their websites and through email.
2. Develop a safe space for Uzbeks for online discourse - Many users are not aware that their information is openly displayed. Facebook, Odnoklassniki, and other internet companies should be encouraged to keep their default settings to private and to provide information on changes to user settings in multiple languages, including Uzbek.
3. Translate Uzbek online media - Uzbeks are at a disadvantage in promoting their causes because few outside Central Asia speak Uzbek, and Uzbek is not available through free online translating services like Babelfish or Google Translate. It would benefit everyone if Google or another translation website would develop an Uzbek language option (and options for Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan, none of which are represented).
4. Copy and preserve Uzbek online media - Since 2005, a number of websites and forums pertaining to Uzbekistan have shut down, and the information within them lost. The internet should not be viewed merely as a means to organize protests in real time but as a long-term project, a historical chronicle, in which information that may seem irrelevant now may prove important later."