Asia-Plus: named case — young woman in Shohmansur district fined 175 somoni for 'black hijab', called a 'terrorist' by police

Asia-Plus, a well-known Tajik independent news outlet, published a report on 23 October 2019 documenting a named incident of forced detention and administrative fining of a hijab-wearing young woman in the Shohmansur district of Dushanbe. The article is in Tajik.

Named persons in the report. Shahnoza Islomova (Шаҳноза Исломова), the aunt of the detained woman, posted about the incident in the Facebook group “Я-Душанбинец” and spoke directly to Asia-Plus. The detained woman (her niece) is identified by role — a sales representative in Dushanbe — but not named in full. Also named: Navruz Odinaev (Наврӯз Одинаев), a lawyer, who provided legal commentary.

Facts of the incident, as reported. Officers of the district Interior Ministry office (ШВКД-и ноҳияи Шоҳмансур) forcibly placed the woman into a vehicle and transported her to the police station for wearing a hijab. She was called a “terrorist” (террорист) and threatened with 15 days’ administrative detention if she refused to remove her headscarf. When her grandmother and uncle came to retrieve her and asked for the written order prohibiting the hijab, officers responded that it was “an order directly from the head of state” (фармони сарвари давлат) and was “in the hands of the president himself”. No written order was produced.

The woman was ultimately fined 175 somoni. According to Shahnoza Islomova’s account, the judge stated that wearing hijab itself was not prohibited by law, but the black colour of the headscarf was — and the fine was for that. The family was given only the bank receipt (квитансия) of payment to “Amonatbank”; no copy of the court decision was provided to them.

Official positions cited in the article. The district police office told Asia-Plus by phone that it had no information about the incident. The Prosecutor General’s Office of Tajikistan, responding to an earlier Asia-Plus query, had publicly confirmed that wearing hijab is not prohibited under Tajik legislation and that no fine for hijab-wearing is foreseen by the Law on the Regulation of Traditions and Ceremonies. Lawyer Navruz Odinaev describes the police action as unlawful (ғариқонунӣ) because no Tajik statute prohibits hijab-wearing. Women fined for wearing hijab were advised that they can apply to the Prosecutor’s Office or to the MVD Internal Security Service (Хадамоти амнияти дохилӣ) to contest the fine and officer conduct.

The article functions as a contemporaneous, named-source record of extra-statutory enforcement against a hijab-wearing woman in 2019 — five years before the 2024 statutory amendment consolidated these restrictions formally.