HRW: Severe crackdown on political opposition TJ

The report states that Human Rights Watch and the Norwegian Helsinki Committee, in a joint news release dated 17 February 2016, documented a wide-ranging campaign by Tajik authorities to arrest, imprison and torture members of the country’s peaceful political opposition, and to target perceived critics abroad. According to the report, the situation worsened dramatically after the forced closure of the Islamic Renaissance Party of Tajikistan (IRPT) in September 2015 and the shooting death in Istanbul of opposition figure Umarali Kuvvatov in March 2015 under circumstances pointing to Tajik government involvement. The report says that since the wave of arrests beginning on 16 September 2015, hundreds of IRPT members have been arrested on what observers describe as politically motivated charges, and that a major trial of 16 senior IRPT leaders began on 9 February 2016. It also records that activist Maksud Ibragimov was stabbed, forcibly disappeared in Russia, returned to Tajikistan and sentenced to 17 years; that at least 20 peaceful activists were serving sentences ranging from three to 29 years; that around 200 IRPT members had been detained; that five defence lawyers had been imprisoned; and that Tajikistan had sought the detention and return of activists from Belarus, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Moldova, Russia and Turkey. The report is based on December 2015 interviews in Moldova and Turkey with 30 activists and relatives, plus earlier research in Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and Germany.