New York, November 8, 2002—Three journalists in Tajikistan have been conscripted into military service in retaliation for producing a talk show that criticized local military officials, according to local and international reports. The program, which aired on October 24 and 27, was produced by journalists from the local, independent television stations SM-1 and TRK-Asia in…
New York, July 31, 2002—Three weeks after it was refused a radio license, the independent Tajik news agency Asia Plus was informed that it will receive permission to broadcast—and become the first private broadcaster to serve the capital, Dushanbe. On July 29, Tajik president Imomali Rakhmonov met with Umed Babakhanov, director of Asia Plus, and…
New York, July 19, 2002—After delaying its decision for nearly four years, the Tajik government last week refused a broadcast license to the independent media agency Asia Plus. Asia Plus applied in August 1998 to open a radio station in the Tajik capital, Dushanbe, where only state-run television and radio stations operate. The agency received…
New York, June 26, 2002—Tajikistan’s Prosecutor General’s Office has dropped its criminal case against Dodojon Atovullo, editor and publisher of the Russian-language paper Chroghi Ruz. Authorities have been searching for Atovullo since May 2001, when he fled in exile to Germany. According to a June 21 report from Interfax news agency, First Deputy Prosecutor General…
Your Excellency: Joel Simon and I enjoyed the opportunity to meet with you and Ambassador Rashid Alimov on April 19 to discuss press freedom conditions in Tajikistan. We very much appreciate Your Excellency’s commitment to review a letter from us outlining our concerns and a number of press freedom cases we have documented. Unfortunately, government harassment, intimidation, and censorship regularly stifle press freedom in Tajikistan. The political factionalism that erupted during the 1992-1993 civil war, as well as the murders of many journalists killed during the conflict, has lead to widespread self-censorship.
IN THE WAKE of September 11, 2001, journalists around the world faced a press freedom crisis that was truly global in scope. In the first days and weeks after the terrorist attacks on New York City and Washington, D.C., governments across the globe–in China, Benin, the Palestinian Authority Territories, and the United States–took actions to…
Journalists across Asia faced extraordinary pressures in 2001. Risks included reporting on war and insurgency, covering crime and corruption, or simply expressing a dissenting view in an authoritarian state. CPJ’s two most striking indices of press freedom are the annual toll of journalists killed around the world and our list of journalists imprisoned at the…
The exhilarating prospect of broad press freedoms that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union a decade ago has faded dramatically in much of the post-communist world. A considerable decline in press freedom conditions in Russia during the last year, along with the stranglehold authoritarian leaders have imposed on media in Central Asia, the Caucasus,…
Although Tajikistan’s civil war ended in 1997, its devastating effects endure. Journalists work in dire, impoverished conditions, exacerbated by the stifling restrictions imposed under President Imomali Rakhmonov. Investigative reporting is rare, especially on sensitive issues such as trafficking in weapons and drugs, border tensions, and power struggles among the political and military elite.
Read first-hand accounts by journalists covering the war in Afghanistan. • December 21, 2001—The New York Times reported that on December 20, Afghan tribal fighters detained three photojournalists working for U.S. news organizations. The journalists were detained for more than one hour, apparently at the behest of U.S. Special Operations forces in the Tora Bora area….