A press statement released by the U.S. Department of State on November 17 notes that each year the Secretary of State has the responsibility to identify governments and non-state actors, who, because of their religious freedom violations, merit designation under the International Religious Freedom Act.
Religious Freedom Designations says the Secretary of State has designated China, Eritrea, Iran, the DPRK, Pakistan, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Tajikistan, and Turkmenistan as Countries of Particular Concern for having engaged in or tolerated “systematic, ongoing, and egregious violations of religious freedom.”
The Secretary of State has also designated al-Shabab, Boko Haram, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, the Houthis, ISIS, ISIS-Greater Sahara, ISIS-West Africa, Jamaat Nasr al-Islam wal-Muslimin, and the Taliban as Entities of Particular Concern.
The press statement notes that the challenges to religious freedom in the world today are structural, systemic, and deeply entrenched. “They exist in every country. They demand sustained global commitment from all who are unwilling to accept hatred, intolerance, and persecution as the status quo. They require the international community’s urgent attention,” reads Religious Freedom Designations.
The U.S. Department of State has designated Tajikistan as a Country of Particular Concern (CPC) repeatedly since 2016, but has maintained a waiver on imposing any related sanctions on the country “as required in the ‘important national interest of the United States.’”
Meanwhile, the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF), a bipartisan, independent body created by Congress to make recommendations about global religious freedom, noted in its annual report released on April 21 that in 2020, the Tajikistani government’s record on religious freedom showed little improvement.
According to the report, Tajikistan has legitimate concerns about violent extremism, but its current policies only exacerbate the problem—such as its extremism law that fails to define the category clearly and often leads to arbitrary detention.
Tajikistan’s legal environment for freedom of religion or belief reportedly sharply declined after the adoption of several highly restrictive laws in 2009. In particular, the Law on Freedom of Conscience and Religious Unions set onerous registration requirements; criminalized unregistered religious activity, private religious education, and proselytism; set strict limits on the number and size of mosques; allowed state interference in the appointment of imams and the content of sermons; required official permission for religious organizations to provide religious instruction and communicate with foreign coreligionists; and imposed state controls on the content, publication, and import of religious materials.
The report says the Tajik government continued to use concerns over Islamist extremism to justify actions against participants in certain religious or political activities in 2020. As in past years, Tajikistan reportedly used this pretext to crack down on individuals in the religious, media, and civil society sectors.
