The last couple weeks have not been good for Tajik journalists. The government is cracking down on independent media, requiring increasingly stringent qualifications to register new broadcast channels and journals. Like most authoritarian governments, Tajikistan employs the favored method of control: ridiculous regulations and forms that one must fill out just right to be approved.

Seeing success in controlling the press, Rakhmonov is getting ambitious. On November 16, Rakhmonov gave a speech in which he outlined a plan to increase technology, but increase his control of the internet resources because “they can be dangerous when used by terrorists.”

Understanding that this knowledge and technologies can fall in the hands of destructive forces that can harm our collective security and basis of modern society, we find necessary to work over providing security to the internet, strengthening users’ trust and improvement of security level of data and networks themselves.

Ah, terrorism. Every Central Asian and Middle Eastern ruler’s favorite excuse to tighten their grip on civil society. Good luck doing that with the internet.