IN ART PHOTOS, UZBEK OFFICIALS SEE SLANDER
How can a photographer defame her country? Uzbekistan tried to answer that question this week in a slander trial that harked back to the days of Soviet censorship, writes the New York Times.
Umida Akhmedova, a photographer and documentary filmmaker, was found guilty on Wednesday of slandering and insulting the Uzbek people. Though the charges carried a prison sentence of up to three years, the judge waived the penalties, saying that Akhmedova had been granted an amnesty in honor of the eighteenth anniversary of Uzbek independence.
After the verdict, Akhmedova said she had been so deeply shaken by the prosecution that, even as she walked away free, it was difficult to feel relief.
“I can’t say my anxiety has subsided, I can’t say I’m suddenly OK,” she said. “There was a fear of going to prison. But to tell you the truth, I feel insulted, that’s the main thing. I still don’t understand how my creative work could have brought me to this courtroom.” Akhmedova said she intended to appeal the conviction.
At issue are Women and Men: From Dawn to Dusk, a book published in 2007, and The Burden of Virginity, a documentary film released the following year. An analysis written by six government experts declares that the film, which explores the tradition of checking a new bride’s virginity, is “not in line with the requirements of ideology.” In an exhaustive criminal complaint, prosecutors argued that Akhmedova’s photographs intentionally showed Uzbek village life in an unflattering light, as in one photograph that shows a young boy lying on the mud floor of a spare-looking house.
The charges prompted widespread protest among fellow photographers, who circulated petitions in Akhmedova’s defense and have organized exhibits of her work in Minsk, the capital of Belarus, and the Russian city of Nizhny Novgorod. Daniil Kislov, editor in chief of the website ferghana.ru, which has followed the case avidly, said he believed that the publicity prompted the authorities to grant Akhmedova amnesty on Wednesday.
“The authorities want to show a rosy-cheeked face, a beautiful face, as if the wise rulers rule so well that nothing will ever happen,” he said. “And 99 percent of artists are afraid to get involved in anything problematic.”
