That is correct – Photographer Umida Ahmedova was arrested and charged with defamation and insulting Uzbekistan’s image. We generally don’t report on incidents that happen in the former communist bloc because we don’t expect better from them. Photography was suppressed under communist rule and it continues to be suppressed today. In fact it is one of the reasons that we have taken up this crusade. We don’t ever want the United States to become like them.

Still this story is so egregious. It is not as if the photographer took pictures of secret military installations. She simply showed life as it is and for that she has been arrested. According to the story:

The charges stem from photographs and videos that Ahmedova shot in remote parts of the country for an assignment sponsored by the Swiss Embassy in Tashkent. The project focused on poverty and gender inequality in Uzbekistan — taboo subjects, apparently, for the Uzbek authorities. Ahmedova faces a fine and up to two years in a labor camp or six months in prison.

If they are so ashamed of their poverty then why don’t they do something about it?

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