HUMAN/POLITICAL PARTIES
DUSHANBE, July 26, Asia-Plus — Rustam Fayziyev, deputy chairman of the unregistered opposition party Taraqqiyot (Progress), who is currently serving his sentence in a high-security penal colony in Khujand, has sent an open letter to diplomatic missions accredited in Tajikistan asking for political asylum, Asia-plus has learned from the Taraqqiyot leader Sulton Quvvatov.
According to Quvvatov, the letter was written last December already, but he received it just recently. “In his letter, Rustam Fayziyev says that he is not in good health condition and has heart problems,” said Quvvatov, “Fayziyev also noted in his letter that during search conducted in his house, some his manuscript materials as well as $500 and 300 somonis were illegally confiscated.”
Fayziyev also noted in his letter that after his arrest his family had been left without means of subsistence and therefore two his sons had had to leave university. Therefore Fayziyev does not him and his family to leave in Tajikistan. He hopes that diplomatic missions will respond to his appeal for political asylum.
Quvvatov also told Asia-Plus that he multiplied copies of the letter today and sent them to the President, the Prosecutor-General’s Office, the Supreme Court, UN office in Tajikistan and the OSCE Center in Dushanbe.
In the meantime, Tajik lawyer also leader of the Social Democratic Party (SDPT) Rahmatillo Zoirov noted that such method of seeking political asylum is illegal. “To seek political asylum a person should be at large and stay in the territory of country, in which he seeks political asylum, or in the territory of a certain diplomatic mission,” Zoirov said. “Since these criteria are currently impossible for him, Fayziyev just used his moral right to apply for political asylum from penal colony.”
We will recall the Supreme Court of Tajikistan sentenced Rustam Fayziyev to five years and ten months in jail in June 2005. The sentence followed his conviction on charges of defaming the president and inciting ethnic and regional strife. Fayziyev was arrested in Dushanbe on August 28, 2004, for allegedly signing and possessing letters that his party reportedly intended to send to the International Court in The Hague.
