KULOB, January 18, 2013, Asia-Plus  -- “Restriction of access to some websites has been caused by technical problems,” Beg Zuhurov, Head of the Communications Service under the Government of Tajikistan, told Asia-Plus Friday morning.

According to him, access to the Face social network, Radio Liberty’s Tajik site and other websites will be restored within the next two or three days at most.

Facebook and Radio liberty’s Tajik site are still inaccessible in Tajikistan.  Currently they are available via a limited number of Internet service providers (ISPs).

ISPs reportedly received SMS instruction from the state-owned Communications Service requesting the sites to be blocked.

The chairman of Tajikistan''s Association of Internet Providers, Asomuddin Atoyev, says www.toptj.com and www.topnews.tj are also on the list of websites to be blocked.

Meanwhile, Beg Zuhurov told Radio Liberty’s Tajik Service on January 17 that his service did not give any instructions to block the sites.  He suggested that the issue might have been caused by technical problems faced by the providers themselves.

This is the third time the Tajik authorities block access to Facebook.

For the first time, access to the Facebook social network was blocked in March last year.  Tajik authorities blocked Facebook and several online news sites, but later unblocked them.

Several ISPs blocked access to Facebook again in late November.

The chairman of Tajikistan''s Association of Internet Providers, Asomuddin Atoyev, noted on November 26 that access to the website was stopped following a request by the state-run Communications Service.

The Communications Service representatives said Facebook was blocked for what they called “technical reasons.”

Facebook became available again on the Internet in Tajikistan in early December.

According to data of Socialbakers.com, there are 41,160 users of the Facebook social network in Tajikistan, which is 0.55 percent of the population or 5.87 percent of the overall number of Internet-users in the country.