20 Years Later: Tajikistan
By Global Journalist Staff Posted Apr 14 2010
Tadzhiks rally in front of the communist party headquarters in Dushanbe Feburary 1990 to call for an end to unrest and the ousting of party leader Kakhar Makhkamov. 18 people have died in the ethnic and political strike.
AP Photo
After severing its ties with the USSR in 1991, Tajikistan has made strides to improve journalism in the country but has hit many walls. After civil war crippled the development of national mass media from 1992 to 1997, Tajik authorities took control over TV and radio.
Many felt that, for a while, journalism was moving up an incline. In 2008, the country was ranked as having the highest level of press freedom out of all five Central Asian states. Tajikistan has more than 200 registered papers, according to the BBC.
But gaining press freedom has been a slow process. While authorities in the country control what gets published and have a stern hold on who gets a license, some newspapers are owned and linked to different political movements. At the same time, these papers have low readership. Because of this, the public often remains in the dark about shifts in power and political priorities in the country, as well as happenings in foreign countries, according to pressreference.com.
In 1994, the constitution made clear that censorship in Tajikistan was not allowed, but the government has made a hobby of ignoring this by threatening and all-around restricting the voices of its country’s journalists. According to IPI, the government even uses “friendly advice” to steer stories that are covered by Tajik journalists. “Friendly advice” advises writers on the stories that do not “need” to be covered. Other tactics commonly used by the government include beatings, firings, seizure of property and general closure of publications. Because the government decides who can obtain a license for a private station, many journalists are denied the opportunity and have to wait for years for answers from the Sate TV and Radio Committee.
But defamation law in Tajikistan has spread and will now cover online publications. IPI reports that, “any print, broadcast or online journalist convicted of defamation faces up to two years in prison, 500 hours of hard labor or a fine of up to 1,000 times the monthly wage.” Pressure from the West has helped to make miniscule improvements to the state of journalism in Tajikistan, but control of the authorities is still crippling the progress journalists are trying to build.