The Freedom of the Press 2017: Press Freedom's Dark Horizon report released by the U.S.-based democracy monitor Freedom House on April 28 ranked Tajikistan among ‘Not Free’ countries again.
The report assesses the degree of media freedom in 199 countries and territories to classify each as either “Free,” “Partly Free,” or “Not Free.”
The other nations of Central Asia — Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan — are also ranked “Not Free,” along with Armenia and Azerbaijan.
Russia and Belarus are also ranked "Not Free.”
Freedom House ranks Ukraine as “partly free,” while its Crimea region is ranked “Not Free.”
The report says that in 2016 Eurasia continued to be the worst-performing region in the world for press freedom. Not a single country was ranked “Free” there. According to it, 77 percent of Eurasia's population lives in countries where the press is “Not Free.”
Meanwhile, Freedom House welcomes “positive developments” in Afghanistan, where the government moved to improve the media environment. Afghanistan is ranked “Partly Free."
The report says global press freedom declined to its lowest point in 13 years in 2016 due to unprecedented threats to journalists and media outlets in major democracies,
Freedom House says only 13 percent of the world’s population live in countries with a free press. It says 42 percent of the world’s population has a “Partly Free” press, while 45 percent live in countries where the media environment is “Not Free.”
Recall, similar concerns about increasing threats against media and journalists across the world were raised by Reporters Without Borders (RSF) in its annual report released on April 26, which Tajikistan 149th among 180 nations in terms of the press freedom situation.
An annual press-freedom index of RSF includes a world map in which countries are categorized by different colors depending on the situation of press freedom there: white indicates “good,” yellow “fairly good,” orange “problematic,” red “bad,” and black indicates “very bad.” Tajikistan is among the states classified as "red" for press freedom meaning that the situation of press freedom in the country is classified as “bad.”
