Registan.net

Tajikistan in the News - and news is rarely congratulatory or happy.  Happy Old New Year to all the slavs - make it count!

• Russian/Tajik relations turn colder over media relations
• Energy Price Hikes
• Rumors of Earthquake send thousands outdoors to sleep
• Cotton cultivation to be down in 2009
• Tajikistan’s TB “Valley of Death”
• Tajikistan ranks high among Central Asian nations for Reporters without Borders
• Economy in Trouble

Russians want Tajiks to control their media, “Learn from your Big brother”

Russian diplomats in Tajikistan have asked that the Tajik government clamp down on local media publishing opinion articles on the rise of violent nationalism in Russia.  This story comes after the Russian Embassy in Dushanbe denounced Russian anti-Tajik hate crimes in December.

Russian diplomats have no right to “ask the [Tajik] government to take measures against certain private media who dared to express their own viewpoint about the brutal killing of our compatriots,” Karshibayev told EurasiaNet. …

Sayofi Mizrob, editor of the private weekly SSSR agrees. “If the [Russian] embassy has facts of defamation or insult, it should approach a court,” he said.

In what some interpret as an insensitive response to the dispute, the Russian Interior Ministry released figures alleging the number of crimes committed by Tajiks in Russia has doubled in the past five years. The ministry also claimed the number of crimes against Tajiks fell by 10 percent in 2008, the Interfax news agency reported December 27.

Russia’s somewhat unsurprising response comes on the heels of a series of stories in Tajikistan, written in response to the rise in ethnically motivated hate crime in Russia in the recent past.  And the Tajik journalists have a lot to write in response to themselves.  In December, seven young men were sentenced in the murders of 19, including one Tajik decapitated and others bludgeoned to death with hammers and other tools.  They documented this on video for an online audience, and many clips made it to the internet.  The fascist-hating young fascists have been targeting dark-skinned non-slavs, predominantly from Central Asia, and attacking them in pedestrian tunnels.  For those unfamiliar with the former Soviet Union, pedestrian tunnels can be great if kept up and under constant surveillance, but at night they become ready-made mugging grounds and worse.

It’s not hard to see the bias against each other in reading Tajik or Russian news.  Buried in this story about rumors of a pan-Asian caliphate are claims that Putin and the Mayor of Moscow themselves are going to crack down on the non-slavs.

The Mayor of Moscow condemned the number of “guest workers” allegedly stealing jobs from Russian citizens, and earlier this month, Putin said he favored cutting immigration quotas in half next year. Armed militias with links to the Russian Orthodox Church are reportedly “patrolling Russian cities” to police Muslim immigrants, prompting “some Muslim groups to become more active” in turn.

Doing a little fear-mongering never hurt anyone, right?  I especially liked the bomb they dropped - Russia’s military will be majority Muslim by 2015.  Blame the Christians and Atheists for underproducing!  Mother Russia needs babies!

Energy Price Hikes

Pretty self-explanatory, but read the Eurasianet story to get the whole picture.
Rumors more damaging than ‘Earthquake’

Another surreal story coming down the pipeline - news of a possible Earthquake rocks four cities in Tajikistan.   Prompted by warnings from American-based relatives, thousands of Tajiks chose to sleep outside in the cold in makeshift shelters rather than be crushed under their Soviet-era apartment buildings.
Tajikistan not counting on King Cotton

Maybe this is good news?  Tajikistan is going to be growing even less cotton next year than it did this year, already a large reduction of past quotas.  What are they growing intsead?  Food crops!  I’d suggest Uzbekistan watch and learn, but the surest way to keep them from doing something is to have the Tajiks do it first.
Tajikistan’s TB Crisis
It’s a tragedy that journalism like this isn’t more common.  The BBC has put together a great story with video covering the exponential rise in lethal TB cases in southern Tajikistan.  Check it out, and consider your travel plans and any future accommodations in Tajikistan.
Reporters without Borders ranking

Truly finding the silver lining, Tajikistan journalist Nuriddin Karshiboev has mentioned in this article titled Another Depressing Year for Central Asian Media that Tajikistan is ranked the highest among Central Asian states.

In Tajikistan, Nuriddin Karshiboev, chairman of the National Association of Independent Media, says that “this year saw a greater level of persecution for critical reporting than previous years”. He added that “arrests and attacks on journalists were rare, which allowed the [Reporters Without Borders] organisation to give place Tajikistan highest ranking in Central Asia”.

That’s almost true.  More shocking is when one considers that how few newspapers are still running, practically all of which operate under the government’s supervision.  Only the darling of the West[ern banks], alpine Kyrgyzstan scores higher - though I would argue this is more of a residual score.  Recent events suggest a turn for the worst is in progress, and Kyrgyzstan can’t count on the same amount of Western support when its regime is even more oppressive than the Soviet Union.
Actual rankings from Reporters without Borders:

1. Kyrgyzstan [110]
2. Tajikistan [115]
3. Kazakhstan [125]
4. Uzbekistan [160]
5. Turkmenistan [167]

It should be mentioned that Turkmenistan might also be suffering from residual judgment, though many of Turkmenbashi’s controls on journalism remain.  Turkmenistan has a freer press than only two countries in the report - North Korea and Eritrea.  Eritrea has been bottom two years running after upsetting North Korea from its place held since the beginning of the surveys.

Economic Woes

According to their Finance Minister, Tajiks now have to worry about the mountain of debt they are building.  The numbers are daunting - $1.3 billion as of now.  Kazakhstan has stepped in with a helping hand, repaying an old electricity debt by supplying Dushanbe with wheat and fuel.  Barter economics might not be a good sign.

Stumble it!