DUSHANBE, October 13, 2010, Asia-Plus — Journalists had many questions to ask of top managers of the Committee for TV and Radio-broadcasting and hoped to get answers from them at the Committee’s quarterly news conference scheduled for October 15 but failed because the Committee brought forward its news conference without prior notification of the majority of media.
Those who were informed of the news conference were said that the news conference would start on October 13 at 9:30 am, while the conference started today at 9:00 am and ended in five minutes. Only journalists from the Tajik national TV channels of Jahonnamo, Shabakai Avall and Safina attended the news conference.
The TV and Radio Committee head Asadullo Rahmonov justified the rapid completion of the news conference by saying that the journalists attending the news conference did not have questions and “the Committee board meeting will start here now.”
It might be supposed that the TV and Radio Committee wanted to avoid questions about the detention of one of high-ranking officials of the Committee for bribery (H.T., a high-ranking official with the Committee for TV and Radio-broadcasting, was detained by officers from the anticorruption agency on September 30 on suspicion of bribe taking. The matter is 30,000 U.S. dollars that H.T. was allegedly to transfer to the higher official in the Committee) and the “strange” arrest of one of employees of the Committee, Ms. Husnigul Daminova, “who got off on the wrong foot with the Committee leadership.”
