RFE/RL Criticizes Tajikistan’s Attempts To Interfere With Coronavirus Reporting
3 years ago tngadmin Comments Off on RFE/RL Criticizes Tajikistan’s Attempts To Interfere With Coronavirus Reporting
WASHINGTON
— RFE/RL President Jamie Fly has criticized the government of Tajikistan for
obstructing the efforts of the broadcasters’ journalists to cover the
coronavirus pandemic in the Central Asian nation.
Fly expressed frustration at the government’s attempts to interfere with the
operations of the service, known locally as Radio Ozodi, at a time when
information “is needed more than ever.”
Fly spelled out his objections to Tajik Foreign Minister Sirojiddin
Muhriddin in a
letter dated March 31.
Fly’s letter comes as Muhriddin’s ministry is set to decide on long-standing
accreditation requests from Radio Ozodi journalists on April 1.
The ministry has been reluctant since late October to fully grant one-year
accreditations to 18 RFE/RL journalists and staff members of RFE/RL’s Tajik
Service whose credentials have been withheld by the ministry or which expired
on November 1.
The Tajik Foreign Ministry on January 21 said it had issued six-month
accreditations to four employees of the bureau, including a driver.
Accreditations for seven other journalists, including two former bureau chiefs,
whom RFE/RL’s Tajik Service had to replace due to the lack of accreditation, are
pending, it added.
The RFE/RL president said authorities have refused to meet with Radio Ozodi’s
reporters and have excluded them from public health briefings.
“We suspect, bizarrely, that it was precisely our active reporting about the
virus that led the government last week to ban Ozodi’s website and censor this
coverage,” Fly said.
Radio Ozodi plays an outsized role in Tajikistan, a poor Central Asian state
bordering China and Afghanistan. Critics have assailed the government there for
not acknowledging that there have been coronavirus cases in the country and
that they are being registered as other diseases.
Fly deplored the actions, describing them as “an effort to control who
works for Ozodi and what they report,” and as a betrayal of an explicit
pledge made by Tajik President Emomali Rahmon to RFE/RL last year.
He decried other efforts to harass and intimidate Ozodi staff members,
including comments posted by some government officials applauding the denial of
accreditation, accusing Ozodi journalists of “incitement” and “disloyalty to
the state,” and labeling the service’s Dushanbe bureau “a nest for espionage.”
Copyright (c) 2015. RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of RadioFree Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave NW, Ste 400, Washington DC 20036.
