December 1 – Top managers of a number of Turkish companies that are members of the Confederation of Businessmen and Industrialists of Turkey (TUSKON) visited Dushanbe to discuss cooperation issues. Turkish entrepreneurs met with Tajik officials to consider issues related to expansion of cooperation in sectors like trade, transport and, health care, education, and tourism.
December 2 – Ongoing social protection system reforms and improved targeting of social assistance to the poor were discussed in Dushanbe at the launch of the World Bank-funded Social Safety Net Strengthening Project. The project launch was co-hosted by the Ministry of Labor and Social Protection of Tajikistan and the World Bank.
December 3 – Mr. Robert O. Blake, the U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asian Affairs visited Dushanbe. Mr. Blake arrived in Dushanbe from Bishkek where he attended Kyrgyzstan’s presidential inauguration ceremony. Before Bishkek, the U.S. official visited Ashgabat, Turkmenistan. Mr. Blake told reporters after a meeting with Tajik President Emomali Rahmon that bilateral cooperation between the United States and Tajikistan as well as the current situation in Afghanistan were among major topics of his meeting with President Rahmon.
December 4 – The 12th congress of the Social-Democratic Party of Tajikistan (SDPT) took place in Dushanbe. The congress reelected Rahmatillo Zoirov to the position of the SDPT chairman and made a decision to rename the Social-Democratic Party the National Social-Democratic Party (NSDP).
December 5 – Tajik delegation attended an international conference on Afghanistan that took place in Bonn, Germany. The conference reportedly reviewed the results of participation of international community in a ten-year process of establishment of peace and stability in Afghanistan and reconstruction of Afghanistan’s economy.
December 5-6 – The third session of the Tajik-Ukrainian Commission for Trade and Economic Cooperation, co-chaired by Tajik Minister of Energy and Industries Gul Sherali and Ukrainian Minister of Regional Development, Construction and Housing and Communal Services Anatoly Bliznyuk, took place in Kyiv, Ukraine. Relevant ministries and agencies of Tajikistan and Ukraine were ordered to set up working groups before the end of the first quarter of 2012 for coordination of decisions made at the meeting as well as to consider the possibility of participation of Ukrainian companies in tenders for construction of rail links and highways in Tajikistan.
December 5-8 – The World Bank Director for Strategy and Operations for the Europe and Central Asia Region, Mr. Theodore Ahlers, was on a working visit to Tajikistan to review the progress under the Country Partnership Strategy with the Government of Tajikistan, including areas for future priority support, press release issued by the World Bank Tajikistan Country Office said. Mr. Ahlers and the Bank team met with the President of Tajikistan, the Prime Minister, other government officials, donors and civil society representatives to discuss the partnership between the World Bank and Tajikistan.
December 9 – The authorities suspended the functioning of the Muhammadiya Mosque in the Vahdat district, also known as the mosque of the Turajonzoda family, for three months. The Committee on Religious Affairs (CRA) under the Government of Tajikistan stated that the functioning of the mosque has been suspended for celebration of the Ashura ceremony.
December 13 – Tajik authorities extradited two Kyrgyz citizens — Kadyrbek Dosonov (aka Jengo), and Sydyk Borbuyev — suspected in the killing of a top Kyrgyz official to Bishkek. The two along with another Kyrgyz citizen, Chyngyz Jumagulov, were wanted in Bishkek for their alleged involvement in the 2009 killing of Medet Sadyrkulov, the former chief of the Kyrgyz President’s Office.
December 13-14 – President Emomali Rahmon paid an official visit to Germany. Rahmon holds talks with high-ranking German state officials to discuss cooperation issues and visited Siemens AG and Robert Bosch GmbH (commonly known as Bosch). The visit resulted in signing of three government-to-government documents: a joint statement by the ministries of health of the two countries on health cooperation; a memorandum of cooperation between the Ministry of Energy ad Industries of Tajikistan and the German Energy Agency (The Deutsche Energie-Agentur GmbH (dena); and a memorandum of cooperation between the Main Geology Directorate under the Government of Tajikistan and Germany’s Federal Institute for Geosciences and Natural Resources.
December 15-16 – Tajik President Emomali Rahmon paid an official visit to Ukraine. He met with his Ukrainian counterpart Viktor Yanukovych to discuss cooperation issues. Tajik and Ukrainian presidents signed a joint statement. Besides, six new cooperation agreements were signed in the presence of the two presidents: a protocol on making amendments to the government-to-government agreement on technical protection of information signed in 2004; a protocol on making amendments to the agreement on cooperation in the field of government telecommunication network; a memorandum of cooperation between the Constitutional Courts of the two countries; an agreement on cooperation between the National Olympic Committees of Tajikistan and Ukraine; an agreement on cooperation between Tajikistan’s Khatlon province and Ukraine’s Lugansk oblast; and an agreement on cooperation between the Chambers of Commerce and Industry (CCI) of the two countries. On December 16, Rahmon visited Dnipropetrovsk, the third most populous city in Ukraine, as part of his official visit to Ukraine. In Dnipropetrovsk, Emomali Rahmon visited the Yuzhny Machine-Building Plant, or Yuzhmash.
December 18 – Suhrob Sharipov, representative of the ruling People’s Democratic Party, won the parliamentary by-election in Dushanbe’s Shohmansour district. Four persons, including Mr. Abduhalim Gafarov, Chairman of the Socialist Party of Tajikistan (SPT), Mr. Abduqahhor Tursunov, Vice-Chancellor of Tajik Technical University, Mr. Suhrob Sharipov, representative of the People’s Democratic Party of Tajikistan (PDP), and Mr. Suhrob Oymahmadov, representative of the Party of Economic Reforms of Tajikistan, ran in the parliamentary by-election. Suhrob Sharipov, formerly director of the Center for Strategic Studies under the President of Tajikistan, won 78.82 percent of the vote, with Gafarov, Tursunov and Oymahmadov garnering just 5.97, 5.68 and 6.11 percent 2 percent of the vote respectively.
December 20 – Members of the CIS Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) reached a tentative agreement that would require all seven member states to agreement to any individual state allowing foreign military forces to be based on its territory. The CSTO members are Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan;
– Hoji Akbar Turajonzoda, a prominent Tajik religious figure, has filed a defamation lawsuit against Saidmukarram Abduqodirzoda, the head of the Council of Ulamo (a group of scholars and imams that provides interpretations of religious practice), in a court of Dushanbe’s Ismoili Somoni district. Hoji Akbar Turajonzoda considers that a statement released on behalf of the Council of Ulamo actually was not coordinated and supported by its members. The statement released on behalf of the Council of Ulamo on December 6 called on the Committee on Religious Affairs (CRA) to give a proper legal assessment of the move of the Turajonzoda family that allegedly commemorated the Ashura ceremony, which is commemorated by Shi’a Muslims. In the meantime, Turajonzoda says neither he nor his brothers have ever commemorated the Ashura ceremony. According to him, they just honored Imam Husayn, the grandson of Muhammad (peace be upon him), and his relatives in the Friday prayer mosque in the Turkobod jamoat in connection with the beginning of the month of Muharram, which is the first month of the Islamic calendar. Imam Husayn was killed on the 10th day of Muharram;
– Migrant worker from Tajikistan, Askarjon Abdulkhiarov, was killed in an arson attack in Russia’s Novosibirsk region. Two unidentified persons reportedly set fire to a wooden house, in which Askarjon was living. The prosecutor’s office in Novosibirsk’s Soverstkiy district instituted criminal proceedings to investigate the incident and two persons were detained on suspicion of having been involved in the arson.
December 21-23 – General Khalid Shameem Wynne, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee of Pakistan, paid an official visit to Tajikistan. General Wynne met with Tajik President Emomali Rahmon and Defense Minister Sherali Khiarulloyev to discuss cooperation issues.
December 23 – The Sughd regional court convicted 53 people for last year’s suicide bombing in Khujand and membership in the banned Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU). Five of those convicted will spend the rest of their lives in prison, while the 48 others were sentenced to jail terms ranging from of eight to 30 years. The trial for these 53 people began on July 12, 2011 and it was held behind closed at pretrial detention facility # 2 in Khujand;
– Hoji Akbar Turajonzoda and his brother Eshoni Nouriddin were fined for what the Vahdat law enforcement authorities say was use of bad language against the head of the Council of Ulamo. The Vahdat city court ruled that Hoji Akbar Turajonzoda and Eshoni Nouriddin be fined 350.00 somoni each. The sentence followed their conviction on the charge of disorderly conduct. Turajonzoda says he and his brother are not going to dispute the court’s decision because they are sure that the decision was taken under the pressure from certain power-holding structures.
December 29 – The Supreme Court of Tajikistan sentenced Hikmatullo Azizov, one of the 25 convicts who escaped last year from a high-security prison in Dushanbe, to life in prison. The trial was conducted behind closed doors. Hikmatullo Azizov, nicknamed “Kuri Malysh” (a mixed expression of Tajik and Russia meaning ‘blind kid’), was arrested in northern Afghanistan on December 19, 2010, and he was extradited from Afghanistan on December 25, 2010. The last jailbreak fugitive Azamsho Ziyoev, 42, was detained in the southern Khatlon province on November 13, 2011.
