(RSF/IFEX) – On 7 November 2002, RSF denounced the forcible conscription of three journalists who criticised the army’s methods in a television programme. The organisation also condemned the army’s threats to kill the television station’s director. “The forced conscription of these journalists is a clear reaction to the daring nature of their report, which irritated […]
(RSF/IFEX) – On 7 November 2002, RSF denounced the forcible conscription of three journalists who criticised the army’s methods in a television programme. The organisation also condemned the army’s threats to kill the television station’s director.
“The forced conscription of these journalists is a clear reaction to the daring nature of their report, which irritated the authorities,” RSF Secretary-General Robert Ménard said in a letter to President Emomali Rakhmonov. Ménard called for their immediate release. “Such behaviour, in addition to the threats to their superior, is unacceptable and demonstrates that the Tajik authorities have no respect for press freedom and democratic debate. Independent journalism is still a very risky business in Tajikistan,” he noted.
The three conscripted journalists work for the SM1 television station. Akram Azizov, aged 21, Nasim Rahimov, aged 20, and Yusuf Yunusov, aged 21, were among nine journalists from SMI and another station, TRK-Asia, who were arrested by military police on 28 October while attending a journalism training course in the northern town of Khujand. Six of the journalists were declared exempt from military service and released, but the others were sent to the town’s army base.
Four days earlier, SMI had broadcast a documentary, produced during the journalists’ training course, about army squads that track down young people to conscript them by force, using violence and rejecting medical certificates justifying their exemption. A senior regional army officer, Fazliddin Domonov, who in the film denied that such methods were used, reportedly threatened the journalists the day after the documentary was broadcast.
In addition, on 5 November, army officials telephoned SMI head Mahmujan Dadabayev and threatened to kill him and shut down his television station.
