Relations between the Russian Embassy in Tajikistan and Tajik media outlets have hit a rough patch amid a public and contentious spat that has played out in recent weeks.

In December, after the gruesome murders of two Tajik citizens in the Moscow region, several newspapers in Dushanbe accused Russian authorities of failing to uphold the civil rights of labor migrants, thereby leaving Tajiks laborers vulnerable to hate crimes perpetrated by criminal gangs and xenophobic nationalists. Adding further insult in the eyes of Tajik journalists, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov took steps in December to limit the number of work permits for foreign labor migrants. Tajikistan, with as many as a million workers in Russia, is deeply dependent on their remittances home. [For background see the Eurasia Insight archive].

Responding to the criticism on December 24, the Russian Embassy in Dushanbe sent a protest note to the Tajik Foreign Ministry demanding that authorities take measures to muzzle local media outlets. The embassy accused Tajik journalists of "deliberately" distorting facts, adding that "certain Tajik journalists had taken the liberty of insulting" top Russian officials.

One headline, published in Millat Weekly, had blared; "[Russian political supreme Vladimir] Putin Speaks, a Skinhead Acts, a Tajik Dies." Accompanying the article was a photomontage depicting Putin before a swastika and a prostrate young man performing a fascist salute.

The weekly Tojikiston played up a similar theme, publishing a photomontage of a neo-Nazi accompanied by a headline "Russians."

Nuriddin Karshibayev, head of Tajikistan's National Association of Independent Media (NANSMIT), a Tajik umbrella non-governmental organization comprising more than 30 media outlets, said the Russian Embassy was out of line to criticize Tajik coverage of attacks on migrant workers in Russia.

Russian diplomats have no right to "ask the [Tajik] government to take measures against certain private media who dared to express their own viewpoint about the brutal killing of our compatriots," Karshibayev told EurasiaNet. NANSMIT runs a monitoring network and legal support centers to help protect Tajik journalists.

Sayofi Mizrob, editor of the private weekly SSSR agrees. "If the [Russian] embassy has facts of defamation or insult, it should approach a court," he said.

In what some interpret as an insensitive response to the dispute, the Russian Interior Ministry released figures alleging the number of crimes committed by Tajiks in Russia has doubled in the past five years. The ministry also claimed the number of crimes against Tajiks fell by 10 percent in 2008, the Interfax news agency reported December 27.

In early January, the Tajik Union of Journalists and NANSMIT issued a joint statement calling for calm and mutual respect. But it remained firm on the Russian Embassy's note: "The tone and contents of the note demanding 'the most urgent measures against the dissemination of such materials in the Tajik media' are inadmissible; they contradict the international standards of freedom of speech."

The editor of one newspaper in question, Kurshed Atovullo of Faraj, responded in an interview with the Asia-Plus news agency; "The Tajik newspaper Faraj has never published reports which give grounds for the Russian Embassy to make complaints." He went on to suggest that "the Tajik Foreign Ministry should immediately send a similar reply note to the Russian Foreign Ministry, because there are lots of offensive reports in the Russian press about Tajiks."

An allegation posted January 3 on the website of the Tajik Labor Migrants' movement has further stoked passions. The movement claimed that a criminal group with police links in the Russian city of Astrakhan had taken fifty Tajik train passengers hostage while en route home. The Tajiks purportedly had violated customs procedures and the criminals were asking for a ransom of approximately $1,000 for each of the detained passengers, the website alleged.

Davlat Nazriyev, head of the Tajik Foreign Ministry's Information Department, said that the Tajik Labor Migrants movement's allegations could not be verified. The Tajik Embassy in Russia conducted its own investigation, he added, and found no truth to the hostage-taking claim.

The Tajik Prosecutor-General's office calculates that the number of Tajiks who died in Russia in 2008 nearly doubled over the previous year, rising to at least 681. The deaths were connected with accidents on construction sites, as well as crimes, including hate crimes. Most of the deaths were not investigated. Because it is overwhelmingly dependant on the Russian economy, Tajikistan has little leverage to complain.