DUSHANBE, October 22, 2013, Asia-Plus – An access to the Asia-Plus News Agency’s website has been blocked again.

Asia-Plus has failed to get explanations from the communications service agency and representatives of the Internet Service Providers (ISPs) this time have also refrained from explaining the reason for blocking of the website.

The website has been inaccessible since October 21 for the second time this month.      

For the first time, a number of ISPs blocked access to the Asia-Plus’s website on October 10 and subscribers to those ISPs could access the website only by using proxy servers.

Representatives of those Internet service providers noted that time that the Asia-Plus’s website was not on the lists of websites to be blocked, which they received from the communications service agency.  “But IP-address of your hosting was on the lists of IP-addresses that should be blocked,” an official source at one of ISPs told Asia-Plus in an interview. 

The access to the website of the Asia-Plus News Agency was restored on October 13.

Besides, many of the websites that had been blocked since October 5, including social networks Facebook and Vkontakte as well as Wikipedia and news websites TojNews, CA-News and Faraj, have become accessible.  

Many websites, however, remain inaccessible in Tajikistan.

SMS services across Tajikistan that were shut down on October 10 were switched on in the morning of October 11.  The communications service agency noted that the text-messaging problems had been caused by unspecified technical problems, but mobile phone operators say the services were shut down on the State Telecom''s orders.

Hundreds of websites were blocked in Tajikistan since October 5.  The blockage began after the Group 24 opposition movement, led by fugitive businessman Umarali Quvvatov, used social media to call for a mass antigovernment protest in downtown Dushanbe on October 10.  The protest never took place.

Tajikistan''s Supreme Court banned Group 24 on October 9, finding it extremist and Tajik chief prosecutor’s office on October 10 offered an amnesty to any Group 24 members who quit the organization.

In a statement issued on October 7, OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media Dunja Mijatovic called on the Tajik authorities to ensure unrestricted Internet access.

“The repeated blocking of websites in Tajikistan over the past few months is a worrying and disturbing trend.  These kinds of reprehensive actions are detrimental to the basic human right to receive and impart information, and to media freedom,” Mijatovic said.