Tajikistan

New York, March 7, 2012--Authorities in Tajikistan must immediately lift the order blocking domestic access to several news websites and Facebook, the Committee to Protect Journalists said today.

Investigative journalists were targeted with retaliatory arrests and debilitating lawsuits, marking a decline in press freedom conditions. Makhmadyusuf Ismoilov, a reporter for the independent weekly Nuri Zindagi, was imprisoned for nearly a year on defamation charges related to stories on government corruption in the northern Sogd region. BBC correspondent Urinboy Usmonov spent a month in jail after security agents arrested him on extremism charges stemming from his reports on the banned Islamist group Hizb-ut-Tahrir. The independent newspaper Asia Plus and reporter Ramziya Mirzobekova faced a civil lawsuit from a senior Interior Ministry official who accused them of spreading false information in a story about a man who died in government custody, press reports said. And a Dushanbe-based independent newspaper, Paykon, was forced to close after a state agency won a sizable judgment in a defamation case related to a letter alleging corruption. In September, President Emomali Rahmon ended the requirement that senior officials convene quarterly press conferences, diminishing already-limited access to leaders.

New York, January 13, 2012--The Committee to Protect Journalists condemns Thursday's attack in Moscow on Dododzhon Atovulloyev, exiled publisher and editor-in-chief of the Tajik pro-opposition newspaper Charogi Ruz.

New York, October 14, 2011--The Committee to Protect Journalists is relieved by today's release of two Tajik journalists, but condemns their convictions on extremism and insult, among other charges, and calls for the quashing of the convictions on appeal.

New York, October 13, 2011--As a court in Tajikistan prepares to issue verdicts in the politicized criminal prosecutions of BBC correspondent Urinboy Usmonov, and Makhmadyusuf Ismoilov, a reporter with the independent weekly Nuri Zindagi, the Committee to Protect Journalists is demanding justice.

New York, September 29, 2011--The Committee to Protect Journalists condemns the ongoing imprisonment of journalist Makhmadyusuf Ismoilov and is dismayed by prosecutors' call for a hefty prison term on defamation and other charges.

New York, August 17, 2011--The Committee to Protect Journalists calls on Tajik prosecutors to drop the fabricated extremism charges against Urinboy Usmonov, the BBC World Service correspondent in Tajikistan, and acquit him.

New York, July 14, 2001--The Committee to Protect Journalists welcomes the release today of Urinboy Usmonov, a BBC World Service correspondent, detained in June in Tajikistan and calls on authorities to fully exonerate him and remove restrictions on travel.  Tajik authorities released Usmonov on bail but continue to charge him with extremism while imposing a travel ban, according to the BBC.

New York, July 13, 2011--The Committee to Protect Journalists urges Tajik prosecutors in Khujand, northern Tajikistan, to drop politicized extremism charges against BBC reporter Urinboy Usmonov, and calls for his immediate release. The journalist is being charged with failing to report the activities of the Islamist group Hizb-ut-Tahrir to Tajik law enforcement agencies, Usmonov's lawyer, Faiziniso Vokhidova, told the Tajik service of the U.S. government-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (Radio Ozodi).

New York, June 23, 2011--Tajik authorities must drop trumped-up charges against Urinboy Usmonov, a BBC World Service correspondent in Tajikistan, and release him immediately, the Committee to Protect Journalists said today.