By Exec Edge Editorial Staff
Assailants on a motorcycle fired five shots into the car carrying Uzbekistan’s former press secretary Komil Allamjonov early Saturday morning near his home outside of the country’s capital of Tashkent. Both Allamjonov and his driver were uninjured. Four men have been detained in connection with the incident, which authorities are investigating as attempted murder.
It is a multi-jurisdictional investigation that includes the prosecutor’s office, the Ministry of Internal Affairs, Tashkent region police department and Tashkent city police department and the Customs Committee, reflecting the seriousness of the incident. Homicide is rare in Uzbekistan and homicide by gun even less so; with exceptions for hunting and sport guns, it is illegal to own firearms in Uzbekistan.
Though authorities have not determined a motive for the assassination attempt, the act is reflective of the internal struggle between the reformers, such as Allamjonov, and hardliners who occupy positions of power in the country, which won its independence from the former Soviet Union in 1991 and retained much of the communist-style bureaucracy of governance, which President Shavkat Mirziyoyev has been trying hard to shakeup.
Allamjonov left the government last month and no longer has a security detail. The attack came the day before Uzbekistan’s parliamentary election.
Some observers of the country speculated the attack was designed to have a chilling effect on the government’s reform movement.
The attempt on Allamjonov’s life “will certainly be seen as a bid to halt the pace of progress toward international norms, and a lesson to others,” according to a recent Forbes article.
The current reforms, which include a sweeping 2023 overhaul of Uzbekistan’s constitution that replaced restrictive Soviet-era laws with new ones that enshrine democracy, transparency and individual rights, began in earnest with the election of President Mirziyoyev in 2016. He appointed young reformers, such as Allamjonov, 40, who held several high-ranking communications positions in the presidential administrations. Allamjonov served as head of the Information Policy Department since last year.
In Mirziyoyev’s inner circle, Allamjonov worked closely with the president’s daughter, Saida Mirziyoyeva, first assistant to the president. Allamjonov became known as a person who could break roadblocks on the road to reform.
“He is considered the most influential person in Uzbekistan’s media space,” The Diplomat recently wrote.
Allamjonov, who founded Uzbekistan’s privately owned Milliy TV channel in 2016, left government service to return to the private sector. He said he will focus on bringing technology and investment to Uzbekistan.
President Mirziyoyev has moved Uzbekistan to rebuild relationships with its neighbors and the West, seeking and winning political and economic ties with democratic countries through organizations such as the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.
He has maintained his hold on power by steadily but judiciously pushing reforms forward even as they are often opposed by the bureaucracy, much of it held over from independent Uzbekistan’s first president, Islam Karimov, whose government was widely criticized for human rights violations and crackdowns on freedoms.
“In a system long steeped in monolithic and secretive institutional habits which President Mirziyoyev is pressuring to evolve, initiatives at modernization tend to meet stiff resistance from the entrenched bureaucracy,” Forbes wrote.
Allamjonov spearheaded many of the press freedom and media reforms when he became Mirziyoyev’s press secretary in 2017. In 2019, he unblocked several foreign websites, including the BBC’s Uzbek service, Human Rights Watch and Eurasianet, allowing Uzbekistan’s citizens to access them.
That same year, taking to Facebook, Allamjonov addressed Uzbekistan’s low global ranking in Reporters Without Borders’ annual press freedom index, writing that “Uzbek journalists have begun covering such pressing topics as corruption and forced labor, but self-censorship is still seen in the media sphere. This means that we still have much to accomplish to ensure freedom of speech and protect the rights of journalists. After all, painful topics can be covered only when the media feel supported and protected.”
He continued: “I think this report should become for us a kind of mirror reflecting the situation with freedom of speech in the republic. And we need to make progress in this area. After all, all … the ongoing reforms [in Uzbekistan] are closely related to freedom of speech and the press.”
The following year, a group of journalists and bloggers asked Allamjonov to serve as chairman of the board of trustees of the newly established Public Foundation for Support and Development of the National Mass Media.
