THROUGH A PHOTOGRAPHER'S EYES

World media outlets sent correspondents to Uzbekistan in the wake of the May 13 events. Some overly verbose journalists were expelled from Uzbekistan right away. Most correspondents and camera crews spent their trips to the country idle at Tashkent hotels, awaiting accreditation.

Only a few journalists made it to the forbidden city past absurd bureaucratic barriers, shams staged for foreigners, and checkpoints all around Andizhan. It is these correspondents who enabled the international community to at least come closer to the understanding of what had happened in Andizhan and to discover from the survivors' stories what happened there afterwards. Yola Monakhova, photo correspondent of The New York Times, was one of these few journalists.

Ferghana.Ru: You worked in numerous conflict areas throughout the world as a photo correspondent - Palestine, Afghanistan, Iraq, Kosovo... Would you care to say a few words about yourself? How did you become a photo correspondent in the first place?

Yola Monakhova: I was born in Moscow but my family moved to the United States in 1981. As for being a photo correspondent, I did not choose it. I'd say that it was vice versa. I studied at the Columbian University majoring in Italian literature and eventually graduated it to become a teacher of the Italian language. I decided to drop it and become a photographer in 1998. That was how it all began.

Ferghana.Ru: What about Italian literature? Not interested anymore? And why Italian in the first place?

Yola Monakhova: Practically by chance. I specialized in comparative history of literature at first. I visited Italy in my third year at the University and there, in Rovenna, I became interested by the Byzantinist history and Orient. Remember W. Yates' Sailing To Byzantium? North Italy, Venice, Rovenna are where Orient begins. Walls of the chapel with Dante's remains in it are covered with Byzantinist mosaics, not with European frescoes. After North Italy, one feels the urge to visit Istanbul, see the ancient city. I did visit Turkey afterwards. The war in Kosovo began then, Serbia was bombed. I went there as a reporter. I had been forced to restore my Russian citizenship for that because the area was off bounds for Western correspondents. Belgrade was only open to Russian journalists. My Russian passport also enabled me to get to Uzbekistan afterwards. There were no problems with the visa.

Ferghana.Ru: Your life story reminds me of Baudolino, a character from a novel by Umberto Eco, who also aspired to get to Orient. You came to Tashkent without a problem but how did you make it to Andizhan despite all difficulties and problems?

Yola Monakhova: I was in Nizhny Novgorod on May 13, Friday, and in Tashkent early in the morning on May 15. The first attempt to get to Andizhan was a failure. Our car was turned back on the pass. We were travelling together with the Ren-TV camera crew, the one Karimov personally expelled from the country the following morning. I attended his press conference on my return to Tashkent and resolved to make another try. This second try was successful even though the risks were great. My driver was a great help because he himself talked to soldiers at all checkpoints where we had to pull over for examination. In fact, I sometimes got the impression that some soldiers and officers waved us on merely because they sympathized and did not want to be responsible for some foreign journalist's failure to visit Andizhan. One officer even asked, "Just do not say it was I who let you through." Soldiers at another checkpoint permitted us to proceed when I let them use my cell phone to call home.

Ferghana.Ru: Were there any encounters with the police in Andizhan itself?

Yola Monakhova: One nuance helped me greatly. I asked Karimov a not exactly pleasant question on behalf of The New York Times at the press conference. The president replied that he did not intend to argue with a charming girl and ducked the question. The press conference was shown on TV afterwards, my question edited out but not my face. So, whenever I was stopped in Andizhan, I always said that I had talked "with your president" and he had "guaranteed me security and no restrictions." It worked almost invariably, save for the last checkpoint where I made a mistake. Some officer there understood that I was a journalist and decided to escort me to the local Passport and Visa Department for "registration". "Is there any chance I could do it next morning?" I asked. Fortunately, he permitted it and told us to go to Sport Hotel where all journalists were. We went to a different hotel and that was probably our salvation. Aleksei [Volosevich] came the following morning and took me with him to his friends' place. I had called him in Andizhan from Tashkent in advance and arranged a meeting, you know. He told me then what to say at checkpoints, how to behave if stopped by the police, and so on. I appreciate it because I would not have been able to do my job without him. Using his contacts in Andizhan, he organized our presence there without official structures being any wiser. We were never noticed. Walking and driving around, we detoured around police patrols and checkpoints and talked to the people.

I decided to try and make some shots of the ambulance riddled with bullets before leaving Andizhan. It landed me right in trouble. Aleksei remained in the cab and I got out and approached the gates of the garage where the locals had said the ambulance was. I told the watchman at the gates that I was a journalist, that I wanted to take some photos and talk to doctors. He confirmed that the ambulance was inside indeed and left to talk it over with his superiors. The gates were open, vehicles were leaving and entering. I came a bit closer and saw the ambulance guarded by a team of OMON servicemen, in body armor and brandishing automatic rifles. I was flabbergasted. Where else will you see an ambulance riddled with bullets watched over by OMON armed to their teeth? I was nervous but nevertheless took two photos. A serviceman saw me taking photos. He came over and asked who I was. ("That's it. End of story," I thought.) I said I was a correspondent of The New York Times. He immediately alerted his commanding officer by walkie-talkie. I heard his response in Russian, "Keep her away!" The serviceman said he would confiscate my camera. I begged him not to do it, apologized extensively, and finally decided to use the episode with the president as the last resort. Even that did not help, unfortunately. The man said he had seen me on TV indeed but had not heard the president authorizing my trip here. "The president said that international organizations were not to meddle in our domestic affairs. We are a sovereign country. We do not meddle in the American or British affairs, do we?" he said. I saw then that this was one soldier who was listening to his president. A doctor, someone high in the hospital hierarchy, turned up then. I had already decided by then that I had to invent something just to get away. The doctor said that his superiors were too busy and could not meet with me, he himself was busy too and I had better go to the regional hospital. We knew for a fact that this was a place to stay away from. It was from this particular hospital that the people wounded on the square had been disappearing. It was a place where we would almost certainly encounter the National Security Service. Well, back to the story. I saw it as my chance. I thanked the doctor, said I understood and appreciated everything, and apologized for having bothered him. I turned away and briskly walked back. "Hey, wait a moment!" the OMON soldier bellowed. Putting on my best American smile, I said, "Sure, I'll just tell the cab not to wait for me and be back in a moment." I thought my heart was going to jump out off the chest. I stumbled, almost hitting the camera against the pavement, literally jumped into the car, and screamed at the driver to pull away while we still could. When we got back to the place we were staying at, the hosts told us that policemen had been combing the area questioning the locals if they knew someone who was renting apartments to foreigners. We left Andizhan that same day.

Ferghana.Ru: What were the locals afraid of? How did their fear manifest itself?

Yola Monakhova: My BBC colleague ventured a thought I agree with. The massacre in Andizhan is a crime equalling concealment of information on what really happened. The people lost their friends and relatives then. This time, however, they suffer because of suspicions that they talk to journalists and perhaps spread the information the regime does not want known. Journalists found themselves facing a moral choice between saving their informants and getting truthful data. Fairness, the essence and goal of open journalism, loses all sense under the circumstances when it has to be paid for in lives. An ordinary family in Andizhan does not need fairness or justice at the cost of lives or freedom of its members. It wants to live. Locals told us that they had to remain alive because they had kids to raise and old parents to take care of. Very many of them denied us interviews and were correct because they had already lost their relatives.

Ferghana.Ru: Were was it easier - in Uzbekistan, Afghanistan, or Iraq?

Yola Monakhova: The trip to Andizhan was a serious ordeal demanding maturity and realism. I managed to deploy the new technology correspondents of Ren-TV had formulated - escaping the attention of the authorities turned out to be the major objective. What with our foreign notions, we would have been absolutely helpless but for the help from the locals.

Ferghana.Ru: Did you sense the so called "Islamic spirit" in all these events?

Yola Monakhova: No, I didn't. Traditions were all I sensed there. Residents of mahalljas are very poor. Compared to the Islamic spirit I had sensed in Afghanistan and Pakistan, there was nothing even remotely like that in Andizhan. I'd even say that the atmosphere of traditionalism in Uzbek society does not differ in anything but some slight Islamic specifics from the atmosphere somewhere in American provinces where, say, Catholics, Baptists, or whoever go to church every Sunday. I do not rule out the possibility of some Islamic mentality or undertones in the events in Andizhan. After all, I could have missed them entirely. On the other hand, I'm quite liberal in matters like that. I believe that a traditional society has the right to live the life it is used to. I encountered a lot of well-educated people in Andizhan, very many of them - many more than I had expected in comparison with the nearby Afghanistan. All residents of Andizhan are literate. Say, you are told that a doctor or teacher lives over there. It may be a man but it also may turn out to be a woman. Unlike in Afghanistan where most of teachers and doctors are men. There are women who are teachers and doctors in Uzbekistan. Society is fairly well developed. It is this parameter that indicates society's resource of civilized life. All the rest depends on the policy of the authorities. What will it be in future? We can only hope for the best. I'm convinced, however, that the Andizhan massacre changed the Uzbeks irreversibly. It also changed political mentality of society. Unfortunately, the Americans themselves know what it is like when the whole world becomes absolutely different all of a sudden. Where magnitude of the event is concerned, the Andizhan massacre may only challenge what happened in New York on September 11. History of America is divided into life before and after September 11, and the events in Andizhan on May 13 also divided history of the country into before and after. It cannot be changed anymore.

Ferghana.Ru news agency, June 7, 2005