Dissident Spotlight: Lolagul Kallykhanova

Lolagul Kallykhanova is a journalist from Uzbekistan who disappeared after covering the government's attempt to prevent an independence referendum.

Lolagul Kallykhanova disappeared for months only to be sentenced to eight years in prison for her coverage of proposed constitutional changes. Source: Committee to Protect Journalists

On July 1, 2022, journalist Lolagul Kallykhanova published a video covering Uzbekistan’s attempt to stop an independence referendum in the northwestern Karakalpakstan Republic. It has been a semi-autonomous region for decades and has long pushed to become its own country.

Shortly after posting the video on her news site, she disappeared. No one knew where she was for months.

Eventually, she was revealed to have been arrested. In January 2023, she and other journalist who covered Uzbekistan’s proposed constitutional changes were charged with:

• Organizing mass riots

• Conspiring to overthrow the constitutional order

• Distributing materials containing a threat to public security

It’s telling that reporting what the government does and how it does it is a grave threat to Uzbekistan’s constitutional order. Of course, it’s a ridiculous charge, but it also shows how fragile autocrats are without military force on their side.

Americans Take Information for Granted

Major American newspapers routinely cover key details about what the government does and how it does it. The New York Times and Wall Street Journal’s editorial boards may reach different opinions about a story and curate different writers, but they’re all able to report — and even lie — about how the government operates.

The freedom to do that gives readers an endless stream of facts. That endlessness creates new problems, like how to filter information that may rest on accurate facts but are combined into misleading stories. Still, it’s a problem that citizens work to solve themselves instead of having the government address it at gunpoint.

In June 2023, Kellykhanova lost her appeal. She was sentenced to eight years in prison for daring to report what her government was doing. Kellykhanova hasn’t been heard from since, but her story can still be told to those who remain free to read.