Tajikistan Lifts Facebook Block
Social networking site was among several blocked following article predicting president’s removal.
Tajikistan Lifts Facebook Block
Social networking site was among several blocked following article predicting president’s removal.
Tajikistan has restored access to Facebook after criticism from the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe, OSCE, over its clampdown on news and social networking sites.
Internet users were blocked from Facebook on March 3, shortly after members discussed an online article called “Tajikistan on the Eve of Revolution” predicting that President Imomali Rahmon, in power since 1992, would be forced from office before next year’s presidential election.
News website Zvezda.ru, which published the article, was blocked the previous day, and three other Russian-language news sites Centrasia.ru, Tjknews.com and Maxala.org were also blocked on March 3.
The OSCE’s media freedom representative, Dunja Mijatovic, wrote to Foreign Minister Hamrokhon Zarifi on March 5 expressing hope that access would be restored without delay.
“This is the first time access to social media has been denied, and I hope that this worrying development will not create a precedent,” Mijatovic said in a statement. “Despite occasional blocking of certain websites in Tajikistan, internet has remained largely free.”
Parvina Ibodova, head of the Association of Internet Providers in Tajikistan, AIPT The authorities lifted the Facebook ban four days later, on March 9, just before Rahmon met with local journalists to mark the centenary of the Tajik press.
“There was a verbal order [by telephone] from the communications agency to lift the ban on Facebook, but not for the other websites,” she told IWPR, adding that this order had not yet been put in writing.
Observers say Tajik officials are wary of the power of the internet, especially following revolutions in North Africa and the Middle East and election protests in Russia last year, in which social networking sites played a galvanising role.
Though under than ten per cent of Tajikistan’s 7.5 million people are online, social networks are snowballing. Last year saw the number Facebook users more than double from 10,000 to over 27,000, according to Internetworldstats.com.
State communications officials initially told internet providers to block the sites because of “routine technical maintenance”, local media reported.
The AIPT had expressed concern about the shutdown, and warned in a statement that it risked damaging Tajikistan’s international image.
The Paris-based media rights group Reporters Without Borders said the shutdown was “as inacceptable as it is absurd”, while Freedom House in the US condemned the move, adding that Tajikistan’s media situation “remains dire”.
The Facebook shutdown coincided with a visit by tax inspectors to a number of media companies.
Zebo Tajibaeva, acting director of the Asia Plus news agency, said the inspection took journalists by surprise. She suspects the visit may have been prompted to media criticism of a draft tax law.
“Planned inspections are usually conducted over a long period of time but this time there were raids on all newspapers on the same day,” she said. “What’s more, we never had to reply to questions in writing before. It was like an interrogation by the police.”
Khurshed Atovulloev, editor-in-chief of the Faraj newspaper, said tax inspectors visited his offices as well.
While the Tajik authorities may have hoped to stem dissent, media analysts are sceptical that blocking websites actually works.
More than one million Tajik citizens work in Russia and can avoid internet bans, while people with mobile internet access in Tajikistan were still able to access Facebook during the shutdown.
Technology expert Asomuddin Atoev said blocking web access would do little to keep sensitive information from the public, but could undermine the communications industry.
“There are many ways for [internet] users to circumvent the ban,” he said. “It isn’t justifiable from either a technological or a legal point of view.”
Tajikistan is not the only Central Asian state to censor the internet. Neighboring Uzbekistan has blocked the websites of the BBC, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Voice of America, Deutsche Welle, Eurasianet.org, Nezavisimaya Gazeta, Ferghana.ru, Uznews.net and Russian human rights group Memorial, as well as IWPR. Most recently, Uzbek-language pages on Wikipedia were blocked in the country.
Turkmenistan has one of world’s most repressive media environments and also blocks many websites, while its security service closely monitors internet traffic. Kazakstan, too, has blocked opposition sites.
Lola Olimova is IWPR’s Tajikistan editor.
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