The Looming New Media of Tajikistan

The Looming New Media of Tajikistan
Shafkat Rajabian, journalist
Tajikistan’s acquaintance with the World Wide Web is still in its early phase. According to Internet World Stats, there were 2000 Internet users in the country in the year 2000, and the number reached 19,500 in 2005 that constitutes merely 0.3% of the population. The process has been slow but steady, and as they say, slow but steady wins the race. There have been reports about a wider access to the Internet especially among city-dwellers in 2007. Internet cafes have become a booming business and many institutions, including schools, provide free connection to the Internet. The government is trying its best to hinder the process by regular inspections of the net-cafes and obliging people to apply for official authorisation to get the Internet installed at home. Many opposition web-sites have faced filtration and blockage within the country. The measures, however, proved almost ineffective. The number of independent Tajik Internet outlets is growing fast. Various NGOs are assisting the youth to launch their own web logs. Recently 17 students of the Tajik Arts University Journalism Department have been trained to open their personal web logs in Dushanbe. The number of blogs by Tajiks abroad is rising even faster. Most of the blogs outside the country are critical of the government’s policies, and even some web logs within Tajikistan dare to challenge government’s decisions on various issues. I will try to scrutinize all the issues regarding Internet usage, blogging and independent net media of Tajikistan in my paper.