Critically ill grandson of Muhiddin Kabiri, the leader of the Islamic Renaissance Party of Tajikistan (IRPT), and his mother, Mizhgona Zainiddinova, have received travel documents enabling the four-year-old boy to receive treatment abroad.
The four-year-old Ibrohim Hamza Tillozoda has life-threatening stage-3 testicular cancer that doctors in Tajikistan have not been able to treat.
His father Ruhullo Tillozoda is the son if IRPT leader Muhiddin Kabiri.
Ruhullo Tillozoda and Muhiddin Kabiri left Tajikistan in 2015 to evade persecution by the state, which branded the IRPT a terrorist group and outlawed it that year.
The four-year-old Ibrohim Hamza Tillozoda and his mother Mizhgona Zainiddinova received travel documents following an outcry from Human Rights Watch (HRW) and the Norwegian Helsinki Committee (NHC).
On July 27, Ms. Saida Umarzoda, the Deputy Minister of Health and Social Protection, told reporters in Dushanbe that Hamza Tillozoda's cancer cannot be treated and therefore “there is no need for him to travel abroad.”
On the same day, HRW and NHC released a joint statement calling on Tajik authorities to lift “a politically motivated travel ban” and allow the critically ill son of an opposition member to receive medical treatment abroad.
The statement says that oncologists in Turkey examined available information about the child’s illness, including photographs showing an orange-sized tumor in the boy’s groin area, and estimated on July 25, 2018, that the boy would be at imminent risk of life threatening complications if he doesn’t get adequate health care within days.
“It is morally reprehensible that Tajik authorities appear to be holding a critically ill child hostage to exert pressure on his father and grandfather,” said Steve Swerdlow, Central Asia researcher at Human Rights Watch. “This case should not be about politics, but about a child’s life.”
