Tajikistan

A court decision against one of Tajikistan’s leading independent news outlets and its editor harm freedom of expression in the country, Human Rights Watch said Monday. The decision upholds a finding of guilt for committing “insult” and a draconian level of damages against Asia Plus, one of the few independent news sources, over a critical article. The decision could have a chilling effect on...

Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has urged Tajikistan’s justice system to overturn a ruling against the weekly Asia Plus and its editor, Olga Tutubalina, in a case brought against them by three intellectuals over an article quoting Lenin’s criticism of the intelligentsia. A court is about to hear Tutubalina’s appeal against a February 25 decision ordering her to pay the three plaintiffs 30...

Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has reiterated its call to the judicial authorities to drop all charges against BBC correspondent Urinboy Usmonov, whose trial began on August 16 in the northern city of Khujand. “Usmonov’s claims of being tortured while in detention are shocking,” RSF said. “They must be the subject of a serious investigation and those responsible...

Authorities in Tajikistan have released BBC correspondent Urinboy Usmonov, although they have placed him under judicial control. He had been held since June 13. His release was announced yesterday by prosecutor general Sherkhan Salimzade. “We are pleased that Usmonov has been freed and is now back with his family after a month in detention, but we reiterate our call for the withdrawal of all the...

Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has joined a renewed call by BBC staff worldwide for the immediate and unconditional release of the BBC’s correspondent in Tajikistan, Urinboy Usmonov, who has been held since June 13 in the northwestern town of Kujand and said it was very concerned about his plight. “The apparent dropping of the charge of belonging to an illegal...

Urinboy Usmonov, a reporter for the BBC World Service’s Uzbek-language service, is being held in a detention centre in the northwestern city of Khujand for allegedly belonging to Hizb-ut-Tahrir, a non-violent Islamist movement that is banned throughout Central Asia, according to Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF). Usmonov’s family began looking for him when he went...

Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has denounced as “illegal and absurd” the efforts of the Tajik government to get dissident journalist Dodojon Atovulloev forcefully returned to Tajikistan from his exile in Russia and Germany and called on these two governments to protect him. The state prosecutor in the Tajik capital, Dushanbe, sent an extradition request to the...

The worsening situation of the Tajik media has been detailed by the National Association of Independent Mass Media in Tajikistan (NANSMIT) in a report of its press freedom monitoring in 2010. Independent media and journalists have been subjected to constant pressure for more than six months and ten media prosecutions are currently under way. NANSMIT said in its report that it registered 58 cases...

Owners of independent Tajik newspapers are complaining that a new ban on selling newspapers on the streets of Dushanbe is hurting sales, RFE/RL's Tajik Service reports. Zafar Sufi, the owner and chief editor of the weekly newspaper Ozodagon, told RFE/RL on February 23 that most people buy newspapers on their way to work or when they walk in the city center, and the ban curbs those purchases. The...

Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has joined the Union of Journalists in Tajikistan (TUJ) and the National Association of Independent Media in Tajikistan (NANSMIT) in condemning the prosecution of the independent weekly Asia-Plus, undertaken by the head of the Organised Crime Control Department (UBOP), Anvar Tagaimurodov, in violation of international and Tajik law...