DUSHANBE, April 11, 2016, Asia-Plus — Since Human Rights Watch’s September 2015 submission ahead of Tajikistan’s next Universal Periodic Review, the Tajik government has continued arresting, imprisoning, and torturing members of the country’s peaceful political opposition and targeting perceived critics abroad, seeking their detention and extradition back to Tajikistan, a reported issued by the Human Rights Watch (HRW) on April 8 said.
It has reportedly also forcibly disappeared critics abroad only to have them reappear in Tajik custody.
According to the report, Tajikistan’s deteriorating human rights situation worsened dramatically in the last year with the forced closure of Tajikistan’s leading opposition party, the Islamic Revival Party of Tajikistan (IRPT) in September 2015.
Recent research by Human Rights Watch and the Norwegian Helsinki Committee uncovered a wide-ranging campaign by Tajik authorities to detain, imprison, and silence peaceful opposition activists and perceived critics at home and abroad. Dushanbe has sought the detention and forcible return to Tajikistan of peaceful political activists in Belarus, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Moldova, Russia, Turkey, and elsewhere.
Since a wave of arrests that began on September 16, 2015 it is estimated that Tajik police and security services have arrested hundreds of members of the Islamic Revival Party on politically motivated charges. In addition, the National Committee for State Security has obligated the lawyers for the defendants to sign ‘gag’ orders that prevent them from disclosing any information at all about the charges, the proceedings, or the conditions of their clients in detention.
Authorities have also targeted lawyers, journalists, and ordinary citizens who have posted statements critical of the government of President Emomali Rahmon on social media.
On May 22, 2016, a constitutional referendum will be held in Tajikistan in order to propose allowing incumbent President Emomali Rahmon to run for re-election indefinitely, to lower minimum age to run for president from 35 to 30, and to ban political parties based on religious platforms in a way to confirm the illegality of the IRTP since September 2015.
Additional recommendations issued by HRW include: immediately and unconditionally release everyone imprisoned on politically motivated charges; allow the Renaissance Party, Group 24, and other peaceful opposition groups to operate freely and exercise the freedoms of assembly, association, expression, and religion, in accordance with international human rights norms and Tajikistan’s constitution; ensure all detainees and prisoners their due process rights, including access to counsel of their choosing and visits with relatives; meaningfully investigate all allegations of torture and enforced disappearances, including disclosing the whereabouts of those forcibly disappeared; and immediately stop persecuting lawyers who seek to represent opposition members.
