Uznews, Tashkent, 12 Aug 2009 – Uzbek Higher and Secondary Education Minister Azimjon Parpiyev has described journalism students trained at two Tashkent universities’ journalism departments as terrorists.
On 6 August the minister summoned teachers of the journalism departments of the Uzbekistan National University and the Uzbek World Language Institute to discuss the exclusion of Uzbek President Islam Karimov’s latest books from a programme to test teachers of the journalism departments.
“We were openly told that if the programme did not include these books, we and students had not read them, which meant, Parpiyev believes, a gross violation of teaching methods and helped breed, as he put it, apolitical young terrorists instead of a spiritually healthy, moral generation,” teachers said.
They also complained that Parpiyev had suggested the changing the titles of some subjects, for example, Introduction to Journalism would now become Introduction to Uzbekistan’s Journalism, thus making Uzbek journalism different from journalism in the rest of the world.
Uzbekistan’s journalism will now be officially based on the president’s books, teachers complained.
On 10 August, Minister Parpiyev held the fourth session to test journalism teachers’ knowledge of Karimov’s books.
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