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On September 16, just after the CSTO summit held in Dushanbe, Tajik authorities arrested 13 active members of the Islamic Renaissance Party and removed the passports of other 50 members to prevent them from travelling abroad. The next day, the General Prosecutor`s Office released a statement explaining the arrests as an action to prevent new acts of terrorism and crimes of an extremist nature, accusing the party of being affiliated with the armed group led by General Abduhalim Nazarzoda and of involvement in a violent attack on a police station and weapons depot that began on September 4. “Nazarzoda was acting on orders from the party, including the exiled party leader, Muhiddin Kabiri,” says the General Prosecutor`s office.
The exiled leader of a recently banned Islamic Renaissance party in Tajikistan, Kabiri has rejected Tajik authorities’ accusations that he ordered to Nazarzoda to instigate and lead the deadly mutiny in September. He insisted that neither he nor his party had anything to do with the incidents.
International human rights organizations have condemned the detention of opposition party members and demanded their immediate release. Amnesty International warned that all are at risk of torture and unfair trial.
“These arrests represent a full-scale assault on dissent in Tajikistan,” said Hugh Williamson, Europe and Central Asia director at Human Rights Watch. “Tajik authorities have the obligation to charge these men promptly with specific crimes or release them and to maintain the presumption of innocence. They cannot hold opposition activists on spurious claims of preventing future crimes.”
Ivar Dale, senior advisor and representative in Central Asia for the Norwegian Helsinki Committee, told The Diplomat that Tajik authorities are now destroying what little credibility they still had with the international community. “To outside observers, it’s obvious that Rakhmon wants to close down the opposition. If he would allow journalists to freely investigate and report on what is happening, perhaps the situation would be different. But right now this looks like a rough take-down of the political opposition, and we also see connections to recent attacks on civil society. Tajik authorities should think long and hard on how they want their state to be perceived abroad. They’re doing an extremely bad PR job right now.”
Dale added that the Islamic threat has been an excuse for the Uzbek regime to silence opposition and civil society for years. “Tajikistan has held a somewhat lighter hand over these groups, but what we are seeing now is a total ban, even on ordinary opposition,” he said.
Read the full story at The Diplomat