DUSHANBE, October 2, 2014, Asia-Plus — A written statement by a number of Central Asian human rights organizations delivered at the 2014 OSCE Human Dimension Implementation Meeting in Warsaw, in particular, notes that non-governmental organizations and individuals who are engaged in human rights promotion and protection activities in Central Asia work in precarious and insecure conditions. While the climate for civic engagement remains fundamentally repressive in Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan, recent developments in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan have signaled a deterioration of the situation in these countries. This trend is related to broader developments in the former Soviet Union, including recent events in Ukraine that have made leaders in the region increasingly fearful of challenges to their power. The situation is also affected by the negative example set by other post-Soviet governments — in particular the Russian — in their current crackdowns on civil society.
According to the statement, the Law on Public Associations in force in Tajikistan grants authorities wide powers to monitor and oversee the activities of associations, resulting in undue interference in the work of NGOs, including human rights organizations. In the recent period, there has been an increase in the number of unscheduled inspections of NGOs, which are often followed by warnings and legal actions against NGOs for alleged violations of the law.
Courts reportedly may order the closure of NGOs for any violations of national law, and in a number of cases, NGOs have been liquidated merely for violations of a technical nature, such as the failure to re-register an organization after a change of legal address.
Those who speak up on human rights in Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan continue to face an overhanging risk of persecution, while human rights groups and defenders in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan have increasingly been the targets of negative rhetoric by public figures, stigmatizing articles in pro-government media accusing them of serving foreign interests and the like, and other forms of intimidation and pressure, the statement says. These trends, which also have affected organizations presenting this statement and their representatives and partners, have resulted in a heightened sense of insecurity among human rights defenders in the region.
Human rights lawyers working on high-profile cases are another vulnerable group, as shown by the case against Shuhrat Qudratov and Fakhriddin Zokirov in Tajikistan. Qudratov, who has represented the interests of, among others, the independent Asia Plus news agency and opposition figure Zayd Saidov, was arrested on charges of attempted bribery in late July 2014. Shortly before this, he had sent an appeal to foreign embassies and international organizations sounding alarm about harassment of Saidov’s legal team. Zokirov, another lawyer on this team was arrested on fraud charges in spring. Tajikistani NGOs have called on the authorities of their country to ensure that the cases of the two lawyers are investigated in an impartial way and that they are not punished for their professional activities.
