From: Igor Rotar <rota@rambler.ru>
Subject: from Igor Rotar
Date: Mon, 15 Sep 2008
This is Igor Rotar, I hope that at least some of you know my name. I am writing this note to re-establish connection with colleagues and maybe establish new ones.
In the 1990s, as a war reporter of Russia’s most influential newspapers Nezavisimaya Gazeta and Izvestia I have been covering major conflicts in the former Soviet Union and some parts of the world. The list of my professional visitations includes Chechnya and Tajikistan, Abkhazia and Ossetia, Afghanistan and Kosovo, Bosnia and Herzegovina and many other places. Overall, I have written more than 400 articles about these cases (some have been published by Jamestown Foundation (USA)) as well as three books (some have been translated in English and appeared in the West; see, e.g., www.informaworld.com/smpp/content?content=10.1080/0963749022000003311).
In the 2000s, I permanently lived in Central Asia (Tashkent, Bishkek, and Osh) working as a correspondent for The Keston Institute (UK) and Forum 18 News Service (Norway). My responsibilities included monitoring violations of the rights of religious believers in Central Asia and Xinjiang-Uighur region of China, attendance of believers’ trials, and interviewing the relatives of prisoners of conscience. My reports on these events were repeatedly used by the U.S. Department of State and the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom.
In 2005, after the Andijan rebellion, I was deported from Uzbekistan for a series of articles on violations of human rights here (see the Country Reports on Human Rights Practices - 2005 U.S. Department of State: state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2005/61684.htm). deportation: in 1991, I was also deported from Uzbekistan for the same reason.
Last year, I returned back from Central Asia to Moscow and started again working for the Russian press. Yet timing for the move was not fortunate, the situation in Russia is dramatically different now, in particular, in respect of the growing censorship.
Due to the atmosphere depicted, I am now in the US looking for a job in research centers, NGOs, especially human rights organizations, both in the US and elsewhere in the world. Ideally, I would be most helpful if work in the Caucasus or Central Asia, the areas of my expertise. I am also looking for grants that would allow me to write a book to summarize my unique diverse previous experiences.
I would appreciate if people who know me to connect with me. My contacts details are 3775 Boyd Ave #74, San Diego, CA, 92111, USA .Cell: 1-858-6107204 Home: 1-858-6379059, e-mail: rota@rambler.ru. I Detailed CV available upon request.