Free press has a price via CIPE Development Blog
Building an independent and informed media couldn’t be more important for Kyrgyzstan. For much of the country, public access to information is limited to thin weekly newspapers and nightly national news broadcasts. Still, Kyrgyzstan has one of the most open media environments in Central Asia.
So when Alisher Saipov, a 26-year-old Uzbek journalist living in Kyrgyzstan, was shot dead earlier this week as he left his office in the southern city of Osh, it was a significant blow to those working to build a strong media. (See the New York Times article.) While the circumstances and motivations surrounding Saipov’s murder aren’t yet clear (he was known as much for helping Uzbek refugees who fled to Kyrgyzstan in 2005 after the horrible events in Andijan as he was for founding the...