DUSHANBE, October 13, 2014, Asia-Plus – A number of Internet service providers (ISPs) in Tajikistan has blocked access to the Asia-Plus News Agency’s website again.
The Asia-Plus’s website –
www.news.tj
– has been inaccessible for subscribers of a number of ISPs in Tajikistan since the afternoon of October 10. They can access the website only by using proxy servers.
Meanwhile, representatives of these Internet service providers say that the Asia-Plus’s website is not on the lists of websites to be blocked, which they are continuing to receive from the communications service agency. “But IP-address of your hosting is 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.
We will recall that hundreds of websites have been 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.
Besides, SMS services across Tajikistan were shut down on October 10. SMS services were restored 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.
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.
