On the case of "Radio Liberty"

Recently, the media has frequently published information about the activities of Radio Liberty, which have no real basis and do not comply with journalistic ethics and to be more precise, the matter concerns the denial of accreditation of employees of this organization.

In order to shed light on this issue, it should be noted that Radio Liberty is resorting to the active use of the information space for its own purposes and is acting contrary to national, international standards and journalistic ethics in the Republic of Tajikistan.

We remind that according to paragraph 1.5 of Article I of the “Radio Liberty” Provision, the representative office is obliged to comply with all the requirements of the legislation of the Republic of Tajikistan in its activities. Also, according to paragraph 2 of Article 32 of the Law of the Republic of Tajikistan “On the Press and Other Mass Media”, “branches and representative offices of foreign media, international news agencies must be registered in accordance with the established rules of the legislation of the Republic of Tajikistan”. According to Article 33 of the aforementioned Law “legal entities and individuals, in case of failure to comply with the requirements of the Law, shall be held liable in accordance with the legislation of the Republic of Tajikistan”.

As analysis shows, Radio Liberty, in its published materials, instead of showing the real picture of the political, economic, social and cultural life of the country, presents controversial and provocative materials to readers and listeners of the media that do not hold true and are groundless.

Thus, the activity of Radio Liberty is contrary to Article II of the Organization’s Provision, according to which Radio Liberty undertakes to disseminate information on the basis of reliable facts and provide access to truthful information, to help strengthen civil society and mutual understanding among citizens.

At the same time, the Representative Office is promoting the extremist ideology of the leaders and activists of the IRPT and the “Group 24”, which is contrary to national ideology, and the materials Radio Liberty publishes protect the interests of organizations that are recognized as extremist and terrorist by the decision of the Supreme Court of the Republic of Tajikistan.

It should be noted that according to paragraph 1 of Article 6 of the Law of the Republic of Tajikistan “On the Press and Other Mass Media” (No. 961 dated March 19, 2013), “Publication of information calling for the forcible destruction or change of the constitutional order, the commission of a crime, the initiation of a racial, national religious, linguistic discord, agitation of war, oppression and violence, terrorist and extremist activities, threats to territorial integrity and state independence is prohibited”.

In the end, it should be noted that all those who are not registered as an employee of Radio Liberty have the right to continue to carry out journalistic activities in other media in the territory of the Republic of Tajikistan.

Department of Information, Press, Analysis and Foreign Policy Planning