Galima Bukharbaeva

Galima Bukharbaeva (; born 7 July 1974, Tashkent) is an Uzbek journalist known for her reporting on state authoritarianism and for providing an eyewitness account of the 2005 Andijan massacre.

Early career Bukharbaeva began her career reporting for the France-based Agence France-Presse (AFP) and the London-based Institute for War and Peace Reporting (IWPR). Through these agencies, she covered topics including the repression of Islamic activists, police torture, and state‑sponsored harassment and violence against human rights activists and journalists. Following weeks of peaceful demonstrations, a group of masked gunmen attacked the jail where the men were being held on the night of 12 May, freeing them as well as protesters who had been arrested the day before. A small percentage of them were armed. Bukharbaeva spent the day reporting live from Bobur Square for CNN, BBC News, and other international agencies.

At 1800 local time, security forces massed for an assault, and soldiers began firing on the crowd of protesters from armored personnel carriers. However, they were intercepted by armed men who took them to the local police station. While in the US, she also testified before the Helsinki Commission of the US Congress about her experiences on the day of the massacre. In 2008, three years after Andijan, she wrote an editorial in the New York Times accusing Western nations of having already forgotten the massacre by beginning to normalize relations with Uzbekistan. The website was blocked within Uzbekistan by state authorities for several years. In 2014, Bukharbaeva's personal email account was hacked and names of her contributors from Uzbekistan were revealed. That forced her to close the website down. In 2016, she started a new regional news service Centre1.com.

In 2007, Bukharbaeva served as a founder and chairwoman of the Real Union of Journalists of Uzbekistan.

Support for Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine

Between February and April 2022, Bukharbaeva published a series of articles on Centre1.com that echoed Russian state narratives about the war in Ukraine. These texts described the invasion as a necessary mission against “Nazism,” called for closer alignment between Uzbekistan and Russia, and urged Uzbek citizens to support the Russian war effort. One article, signed by a movement founded by Bukharbaeva, praised Lenin and Stalin and encouraged “the strongest and bravest” Uzbekistanis to volunteer for combat, while others should organize rallies and humanitarian aid.

In another article, Bukharbaeva compared the 2005 Andijan massacre to the atrocities in Bucha, Ukraine, questioning the credibility of Ukrainian victims and portraying Andijan as the “real massacre.”

She also praised Chechen units fighting for Russia, and lauded a pro-Soviet symbol — an elderly woman waving the USSR flag in occupied Ukraine — as a representation of the “liberation.”

A 2025 independent investigation published by Yep.uz analyzed this ideological shift, concluding that Bukharbaeva and her website Centre1 had become conduits for Russian war rhetoric.

Recognition In 2005, Bukharbaeva won the International Press Freedom Award of the Committee to Protect Journalists. The award citation recognized the dangers she faced in her reporting and stated that she had earned "a reputation as one of Central Asia's most outspoken journalists".

Personal life Bukharbaeva is married to a German journalist, Marcus Bensmann, who works for the Swiss daily newspaper Neue Zurcher Zeitung. Bensmann, Bukharbaeva's boyfriend at the time, was also present at the Andijan massacre and was also subsequently labeled a terrorist by the Uzbek government.