DUSHANBE, July 31, Asia-Plus — Since a court in Dushnabe’s Shohmansour district has dismissed her challenge on headscarf ban, Ms. Davlatmo Ismoilova, a 20-year-old student at Tajik State Institute of Languages, has appealed to the city court and a court case pitting university female student against Tajik State Institute of Languages and the Ministry of Education (MoE) is supposed to begin in the city court today.
Ismoilova’s defense lawyer Shuhrat Qudratov told Asia-Plus that consideration of the lawsuit was scheduled to start today. However, he does not rule out that for any reasons the trial may be postponed to another day. .
We will recall that the court in Dushanbe’s Shohmansour on July 12 dismissed the lawsuit by Davlatmo Ismoilova against the Institute and the Ministry of Education ban on Islamic headscarves. Judge Abdullo Rahmatov, who took in the trial, dismissed the case, told journalists that the case had been dismissed on the grounds that Davlatmo Ismoilova and her defense lawyer had failed to produce any convincing proofs to support their complaint.
The case is believed to be Tajikistan”s first reported legal challenge to the ban passed earlier this year on Islamic headscarves. We will recall that just several days after President Emomali Rahmon in March this year ordered a ban on student’s use of cell phones and private cars, the MoE ordered bans on both headscarves and miniskirts for university students.
Davlatmo Ismoilova appealed in the court on May 25, accusing the Institute and the MoE of not allowing her to wear a headscarf to the Institute and thus violating her rights.
Davlatmo on July 6, when the case began, told journalists that in April, she was not allowed to examinations, because the Institute’s administration has not allowed her to come to the institute in the headscarf justifying it by the mentioned order of the MoE.
