DUSHANBE, November 18, 2015, Asia-Plus – We will block websites spreading terrorist propaganda, Jonibek Dadomatov, the deputy head of the control department of the communications service agency, announced at an international conference in Dushanbe yesterday.
Organized by the OSCE Office in Tajikistan, the two-day international conference entitled “Telecommunications, Broadcast and Tajikistan’s Obligations in the Framework of the WTO” is concluding today.
“Is it possible to speak about pressure on the freedom of speech when the websites are blocked by the Supreme Court decision? If news websites spread the banned information they will be certainly blocked,” Dadomatov noted.
Asked how they monitor websites, he noted that relevant bodies such as the Supreme Court and other law enforcement agencies, within the limits of their powers, determine which information can pose threat to Tajikistan’s information security. “Websites spreading information about terrorist or extremist websites will also be blocked,” Tajik official said.
“I must stress that when the Supreme Court bans any organization as an extremist or terrorist and the final part of the Court’s decision is broadcast several times by national TV channels, there is no necessity to instruct Internet service providers to block websites of these organizations. However, they do not block them sometimes, and therefore we have to send notice to them,” the communications service agency official noted.
According to him, some news websites publish materials citing extremist sites and the communications service agency is forced to block them. “The national communications regulator does not have technical opportunities to block only one page. We hope our technical opportunities will improve in the future,” Dadomatov said.
He also noted that they had established cooperation with a number of social media websites, for example with
Odnoklassniki
. “They now can delete pages spreading extremist propaganda following an official application by Tajik communications service agency request,” Tajik official said, adding that the list of the banned websites could be found on the Interior Ministry’s website.
