DUSHANBE, March 4, 2013, Asia-Plus – Several local journalists have decided to attend the first hearing over Tojiron’s libel lawsuit against independent Dushanbe newspaper, Imrouz News (News Today), and a lawyer from Sughd province, Ms. Fayziniso Vohidova, instead of attending a government event dedicated to the Tajik Press Day.

The hearing is set for March 11, which is marked as the Tajik Press Day.

Discussions on this subject have been carried out on Facebook.

We will recall that Tojiron Company filed a libel lawsuit against Imrouz News and Ms. Fayziniso Vohidova in late February, asking for 1.00 somoni from the newspaper and 50,000 somoni from Ms. Fayziniso Vohidova as compensation of moral damage that was allegedly caused by an article published by the newspaper.

Representative of Tojiron noted that since Tojiron was a legal entity, its lawyers had decided to file the lawsuit in Tajikistan’s High Economic Court.

An article “Murdafurushi dar Shirkati Tojiron” that was published in the newspaper on January 17 has become the cause of the lawsuit.  The article was about a fatal traffic accident, involving one of Tojiron’s gasoline tankers, which took place on the Dushanbe-Khujand highway.

“We consider that publication of unchecked facts is a great mistake of the newspaper.  Each journalist must double check the facts and find out opinions of both sides,” said representative of Tojiron.  “In this case, Imrouz News has not checked the facts about the accident, and thereby, it has undermined image of Tojiron among the population.”

Meanwhile, editorial staff of Imrouz News noted that they published a disclaimer 15 days after the article was published.