These three days showed us that dialogue is possible
15.06.2002Dariga Nazarbayeva, chairperson of the board of directors of the Khabar Broadcasting Agency, was the main organizer of the Eurasian Media Forum, which was held April 25-27 in Almaty. She is the daughter of Kazakhstan's President Nursultan Nazarbayev.
As the lead organizer of the Eurasian Media Forum, would you tell us what you learned from the conference?
The result is positive. Up to this moment, we are still receiving a lot of letters from participants. For many of them, Kazakhstan, its future potential and its hospitality were a big surprise. I should say that the best thing in our country is the hospitality of our people.
The forum was divided into several parts, and the first was ''Public Relations in Kazakhstan.'' The objective was to show the world what Kazakhstan is. The people who came to the conference are decision-makers and talented, famous journalists. There were also politicians from institutes in Washington, London, Russia and Kazakhstan. They made the conference interesting and provoked hot discussions.
From my point of view, the forum was not just ''an action for action.'' We may not have come to any practical conclusion and did not produce any final documents, but we didn't plan to do this. [The forum] was just the first step toward creating a dialogue among colleagues from different parts of the Eurasian continent and other countries. We just wanted to get all of them together here. We wanted to talk to each other, to eat and to drink together. It was rather successful - and it was only the first success. Many people advised me to organize the next forum in Almaty again, and this will happen.
Did the forum meet your expectations?
It did. These three days showed us that there is a possibility for dialogue among people from different parts of the world, with different opinions, points of view and religions. These people are highly intelligent, and I believe they want to understand each other. That is the main issue.
The second point is that since the independence of Kazakhstan, the country has received a lot of negative press in the foreign media about the process of democratization in Kazakhstan, about human rights and about the president. It was said that in Kazakhstan, there is no freedom of democratic process, no free media and so on. A lot of myths became part of public opinion.
Was this false information?
Yes. And my task was to show, through the Eurasian Media Forum, that it is not true - that there is an opposition media here, there is a political opposition and there are different political parties. [The different groups] were all invited to this forum. They had a lot of opportunities to speak about what they think.
Did they participate in the forum?
Yes. They were participants, they made speeches, they were involved in discussions - and that was the main issue for us. Perhaps I do not agree with some ideas that were proposed, but that's natural. Of course, there are a lot of negative things. There is an unprofessional way to solve political problems, both from the side of opposition and from the side of government.
Was one of the goals of the conference to show the world that freedom exists in the country?
Freedom of the press is necessary to maintain stability and to promote the stable development of Kazakhstan. I deeply believe anybody can have his or her own point of view.
At the conference, at least, the media started to understand that things are not simple - that there are many viewpoints and positions.
In terms of freedom of speech and freedom of the press, how does Kazakhstan compare with other countries of the region?
No doubt, Kazakhstan is the first and the best. If you ask me where I would like to live, I would choose Kazakhstan. What is interesting is that many of the international organizations dealing with human rights, freedom of the press and so on prefer to have their headquarters not in Tashkent, Ashkhabad or Dushanbe, but in Almaty. However, some of them write negative reports about Kazakhstan.
You also have to take into account that the populations of Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan are more homogeneous than that of our country. Ideally, all the reforms on liberalization could have been successful, given such an ethnic composition.
Kazakhstan is not homogeneous - Kazakhs compose barely 50 percent of the population - yet all our reforms on liberalization were conducted without shedding any blood during the past 10 years, and without hurting anybody's feelings. This helped to form foreign policy with our neighbors and partners.
Besides the internal stability of the reforms, foreign policy also deserves special attention. We didn't quarrel with each other. Moreover, we solved centuries-old boundary-delimitation problems with China. Now we are solving the same problems with Uzbekistan and Russia. We have constructive relations with our neighbors.
Do you think that ethnic diversity in Kazakhstan helps it to have a more open society?
Yes, it does. Kazakhstan is the best example of how these ethnic problems can be solved without any civil war.
The main objective of the forum was to establish dialogue among different countries and the media. Why is this necessary?
Because I want to live in a world without war and violence. No country in our region is secure from violence and war, which can be caused by factors both within the country or outside it. In fact, there is a lack of knowledge about this region. We know the West even better than many Western people themselves. We know their ancient history, their modern history, their politics. They know almost nothing about us - about the East, Central Asia, Kazakhstan, the Arab world, Southeast Asia, Russia and others. In the media, there is still a stereotypical approach to the region.
Would you like to talk about terrorism?
What worries me very much is speculation around the notion of terrorism because now anything can be named terrorism, and it creates a very easy opportunity to start a war against you. Tomorrow, you can be accused of, let us say, hiding Al-Qaeda, and there will be a massive information attack, the world will believe that your country is a center of evil, and it will say that this country should be eliminated. This can be done by journalists and the mass media. And the most horrible thing is that it has become a rule to interfere in the internal affairs of a sovereign country.
That is why I think that journalists should meet with each other and should know more about our region, about what we think, how well educated we are, how we see our future. The world should understand that we are not enemies.
Tomorrow, a new enemy of the world can appear, and everybody will rush there. But sometimes we have to stop and think, and such forums can help.
What are your plans for the next forum?
The forum will go on. The next one will be in Almaty, and I already have an idea where the third one will be. But first I would like to discuss this with my Russian colleagues.
For the next forum, I would like to propose the idea of creating a code of professional ethics for international journalism, especially in the conditions of war.
Why are almost all international relations and almost all spheres of life regulated by the United Nations and other institutions, except for mass media?
Sooner or later, this issue should be addressed. If we as a professional community do not rise to this issue, someone else will do it.
For the next forum, we are preparing the first-draft version of the code. About three months before the forum, we would like to distribute it among the participants and start to discuss it via Internet. I do not know how many forums we'll need to accept the final version of the code. That is why I will be persistent. If I achieve the acceptance of this code, I can relax.
The second very concrete result that I would like to achieve is educational programs for journalists, especially in this region. This could include the organization of some special training sessions, exchange programs or master classes. Now we are thinking about concrete proposals.
Journalism in our [Commonwealth of Independent States] region suffers from non-professionalism. This concerns both opposition and government media. In other words, there is a misunderstanding of the economy in general - what the market is, what finance is, what the banking system is. The economy influences politics. For instance, lead is the main source of profit for the country, and this topic is in the shadows. Our media does not cover it at all.
Source: International Herald Tribune
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