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Tajikistan Bars Uzbek Reporter


Tajik Foreign Minister Hamrokhon Zarifi participates in Tajik-U.S. talks in Dushanbe on April 11, 2012
Tajikistan's Foreign Ministry failed this week to renew the accreditation of Gulnora Ravshan, a correspondent with Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty's (RFE/RL) Uzbek Service.

Ravshan has worked in RFE/RL's Dushanbe bureau since 2006, reporting on domestic issues in Uzbek.

Tajik authorities issued no explanation for the rejection.

Without accreditation, Ravshan would be denied the right to practice journalism in Tajikistan. She would be the second Uzbek journalist in Tajikistan forced to stop working for an international media company recently.

Last June, BBC Uzbek Service correspondent Urunboy Usmonov was sentenced to three years in prison on charges of association with a banned Islamist group, Hizb ut-Tahrir.

Dunja Mijatovic, the OSCE's representative on freedom of the media, criticized Usmanov's arrest in July, calling it an attempt to censor reporting on sensitive issues.

Usmonov was released in a nationwide amnesty in October, but his conviction remains and he is no longer reporting.

Usmonov, who lives in Tajikistan's northern city of Khujand, had worked for the BBC for 10 years.
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