Tajikistan Delivers Double Whammy to Press Freedom

On October 14, courts in northern Tajikistan found two journalists guilty of crimes related to doing their jobs, local news agencies reported.

BBC reporter Urinboy Usmonov was sentenced to three years for not tattling on his sources. He was then released under amnesty. Makhmadyusuf Ismoilov, who has spent the last 11 months in prison on charges of “insult,” slander and inciting hatred after publishing a series of articles exposing local government corruption in his home district, was fined over $7,000 and forbidden from reporting for three years. 

Their ordeals and guilty verdicts are a warning to other journalists. Both plan to appeal.

Ismoilov had faced 16 years for his reporting in Nuri Zindagi, a weekly with a circulation of about 2,000. His fine is several times the average annual salary in Tajikistan.

 

In June, Usmonov, a reporter with the BBC’s Uzbek service, was arrested and held for a month on suspicion of belonging to Hizb-ut-Tahrir, an Islamist extremist group. After intense diplomatic pressure, authorities lessened his charges to contacting radicals without ratting them out (i.e. interviewing them). 

Both cases have received extensive international attention, which appears to have paid off. It is rare for charges to be reduced in Tajikistan, where acquittals are almost unheard of.

The Committee to Protect Journalists, a New York-based watchdog, had demanded authorities drop the “fabricated” charges. "Both journalists are being punished for nothing other than their independent reporting on issues of public interest,” CPJ said in an October 13 statement. 

Defamation and other criminal charges that effectively silence critical media are commonly applied in Tajikistan. In addition to facing the possibility of prison, journalists often have to contend with financially ruinous lawsuits and physical violence.

At the final hearing before his sentencing, Ismoilov told the court, "In the constitution of Tajikistan, every person is guaranteed the right to freedom of speech.”

So while these journalists’ freedom should be a reason to celebrate, they remain a grim warning to others that, in Tajikistan, rights remain only on paper.