Russian journalist Sergey Ponomaryov, working for Komsomolskaya Pravda, a daily Russian tabloid newspaper, says he began to receive death threats from Tajik migrants after placement of his article about his trip to Tajikistan on the newspaper’s website.
The journalist notes that he was forced to go to police over the death threats.
Recall that an article entitled “Tajikistan: from the Soviet Destitution to the Bright Future” was posted on the newspaper’s website on July 16, 2016.
Sharif Hamdampour, who is an editor-in-chief of the Dushanbe-based Tojikiston (Tajikistan) weekly and a partner of Komsomolskaya Pravda in Tajikistan, told reporters in Dushanbe on July 21 that the article contains derogatory remarks about Tajiks.
Ponomaryov’s article has described Tajikistan as a country of “Ravshans and Jamshuds,” fictional characters of Tajik migrant workers in a popular Russian comedy show, Hamdampour said.
Describing a trip on a Tajik domestic flight, Ponomaryov wrote that he “was the only Slavic face shining” among the passengers who were “all Ravshans and Jamshuds.”
Publication of Komsomolskaya Pravda has been suspended in Tajikistan.
The Tajik edition of the newspaper — published weekly with a circulation of 5,000 — has been popular among Russian-speakers in the capital, Dushanbe, and other Tajik cities.
Komsomolskaya Pravda has been published in Tajikistan since 2006 on the basis of bilateral agreements.
