DUSHANBE, August 3, 2012, Asia-Plus — Media organizations of Tajikistan have criticized the Communications Council under the Government of Tajikistan for access to local and international news websites.
A joint statement released by Tajik Journalists’ Union, National Association of Independent Media of Tajikistan (Nansmit), Media Alliance of Tajikistan, and Tajikistan’s Media Council on August 3, in particular, notes that Internet access to Tajikistan’s leading news agency Asia-plus has been blocked for the third time in two months.
The Russian news agency RIA-Novosti’s website, video sharing website YouTube, two other Russian news sites (Lenta.ru and Vesti.ru), two news portals specializing in Central Asia (Fergananews.com and Centrasia.ru) and the local forum Pamir-vesti.ru, have also been blocked in recent days.
Restriction of access to certain news websites has become typical for the Tajik communications service agency. In recent months, the Communications Service has imposed illegal sanctions on fifteen news resources, the statement said, noting that position of local Internet providers has also caused concern. “Allowing themselves to be run by the communications service agency, they [local Internet providers] have become accomplices in violation of rights of legal and physical entities.”
Both local and international organizations have criticized the Communications Service for blocking access to news websites and offered specific measures to regulate the Internet, the statement said. “We are sure that obvious neglect of international and national norms of information legislation by the public authorized body undermines image of Tajikistan and hurts confidence of interstate structures and financial institutions in democratic reforms carried out by the country’s leadership.”
The statement notes that the country’s media organizations sent recommendations on the necessity to work out the procedure of blocking websites to the appropriate public bodies in May. “The public bodies, however, ignored these proposals and illegal actions against media are going on. Under this situation, we call on the interested sides once again to solve the issue within the framework of law, with taking into account the constitutional right of citizens to information. At the same time, we are ready to provide legal and consultative support to media for protection their interests.”
We will recall that in a statement released on August2, the Paris-based media watchdog Reporters Without Border (RSF) said that Tajikistan, by increasingly making systematic use of cyber-censorship, could end up on RSF”s annual list of the “Enemies of the Internet,” which could tarnish the country”s image.
“Tajikistan already came close to being added to the list of countries ‘under surveillance’ in our last ‘Enemies of the Internet’ report in March and now the government is clearly doing everything possible to make sure it is added next year, regardless of the negative impact this would have on the country’s image,” said the RSF statement said. “By making increasingly systematic use of cyber-censorship, Tajikistan is falling in line with his Central Asian neighbor Kazakhstan and could eventually catch up with neighboring Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan, which practice even more drastic forms of online censorship.”
