DUSHANBE, October 13, 2014, Asia-Plus – An access to the website of the Asia-Plus News Agency was restored on October 13.
We will recall that the Asia-Plus’s website –
www.news.tj
– had been inaccessible for subscribers to a number of the Internet service providers (ISPs) in Tajikistan since the afternoon of October 10. They could access the website only by using proxy servers.
Representatives of these Internet service providers noted that the Asia-Plus’s website was not on the lists of websites to be blocked, which they received from the communications service agency. “But IP-address of your hosting was on the lists of IP-addresses that should be blocked,” an official source at one of ISPs told Asia-Plus in an interview.
Asia-Plus has failed to get the communications service agency on the phone.
Besides, many of the websites that had been blocked since October 5, including social networks Facebook and Vkontakte as well as Wikipedia and news websites TojNews, CA-News and Faraj, have become accessible.
SMS services across Tajikistan that were shut down on October 10 were switched on in the morning of October 11. The communications service agency noted that the text-messaging problems had been caused by unspecified technical problems, but mobile phone operators say the services were shut down on the State Telecom”s orders.
Hundreds of websites were blocked in Tajikistan since October 5. The blockage began after the Group 24 opposition movement Group 24, led by fugitive businessman Umarali Quvvatov, used social media to call for a mass antigovernment protest in downtown Dushanbe on October 10.
Tajikistan”s Supreme Court banned Group 24 on October 9, finding it extremist and Tajik chief prosecutor’s office on October 10 offered an amnesty to any Group 24 members who quit the organization.
In a statement issued on October 7, OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media Dunja Mijatovic called on the Tajik authorities to ensure unrestricted Internet access.
“The repeated blocking of websites in Tajikistan over the past few months is a worrying and disturbing trend. These kinds of reprehensive actions are detrimental to the basic human right to receive and impart information, and to media freedom,” Mijatovic said.
