East Europe Censorship News

Tajikistan has enacted a ban on the distribution of the video games Counter-Strike and Grand Theft Auto (GTA), citing concerns about the games containing violent and immoral content.

The country's interior ministry announced that police in the capital, Dushanbe, will conduct raids and inspections of computer gaming centers suspected of selling these games. The ministry said,

Young people and teenagers who regularly play these games come under their negative influence and commit various crimes.

The ministry urged parents to monitor their children's activities and discourage them from playing games that promote killing, theft, and violence.

Authorities in Russia's republic of Chechnya have imposed limits on music tempos to abide by strict cultural norms in the Muslim-majority region.

From now on all musical, vocal and choreographic works should correspond to a tempo of 80 to 116 beats per minute, Chechnya's Culture Ministry said in a statement earlier this week.

The new tempo standard, which is relatively slow in the context of popular music, was announced following Chechen Culture Minister Musa Dadayev's meeting with local state and municipal artists.

Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov had instructed Dadayev to make Chechen music conform to the Chechen mentality, according to the statement.

Local artists were ordered to rewrite their music by June 1 to accommodate the changes. Otherwise, they would not be allowed for public performance, the Culture Ministry wrote on the messaging app Telegram.