HRW: Exiled activists' relatives detained over protest

The report states that in a Human Rights Watch news release dated 6 October 2023, the organisation documented the detention by Tajik authorities of relatives of diaspora opposition members who had protested during President Emomali Rakhmon’s September 2023 visit to Germany. According to the report, on 28 September activists of the National Alliance of Tajikistan and Group 24 — both banned in Tajikistan — organised rallies outside the Tajik embassy in Berlin, and on 29 September some protesters threw eggs at the car carrying President Rakhmon to a meeting with German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier. Beginning on 30 September, the report says, Tajik law enforcement detained at least 47 relatives of rally participants and known opposition members, ranging in age from an 81-year-old man to a one-and-a-half-year-old child, reportedly subjecting them to ill-treatment, threats, blackmail and insults. It records that many relatives were recorded in videos apparently condemning the protests and calling for dissidents to return to Tajikistan, although the circumstances under which they participated were unclear. The report notes that the Islamic Renaissance Party of Tajikistan and Group 24 were banned and labelled terrorist in 2015–2016, and that the National Alliance of Tajikistan, formed in 2018 in Warsaw, was banned and labelled terrorist in 2019. It further states that exile group head Sharofiddin Gadoev reported his elderly mother was detained on 1 October, and that 13 of the Berlin protesters have called on Tajikistan to stop punishing their relatives.