DUSHANBE, February 25 (RIA Novosti) – Tajikistan has launched its first domestic social networking website.
The parta.tj site had some 800 registered users as of Monday evening. It has a Russian-language interface and offers functions similar to those of Vkontakte, Russia’s most popular social networking website, which is visited by about 60 million users daily.
However, it targets a mainly Tajik internet audience, inviting users who register to choose their location from about 60 cities and towns, all of them in Tajikistan.
The authorities in the Central Asian republic have attracted international criticism in recent years for repeatedly blocking and unblocking access to foreign social networking sites, including Facebook, Vkontakte and Twitter.
Access to YouTube was limited during the presidential election campaign in November 2013, when the long-serving incumbent Emomali Rakhmon was re-elected for another seven-year term with 83.6 percent of the vote.
