Forum18: HR defenders threatened (Ismaili GBAO)

Forum 18 News Service article by Mushfig Bayram, dated 23 February 2024, reporting that Tajikistan has opened criminal cases against exiled human rights defenders Anora Sarkorova and her husband Rustamjon Joniyev, and placed them on Russia’s Federal Wanted List. The document states both have covered the regime’s violations against Ismaili Muslims in Mountainous Badakhshan Region (GBAO) since the repression of protests from May 2022. Charges are brought under Criminal Code Article 307-3, Part 2 (“Participation in the activity of political parties… liquidated or banned by a court for extremist activity”) and Article 307-1, Part 2 (“Public calls for extremist activity… using the mass media or the internet”). Sarkorova told Forum 18 on 19 February 2024 that officials repeatedly summoned her mother and Joniyev’s father between June 2022 and February 2024, demanding the couple stop writing about the banned Islamic Renaissance Party and about religious freedom in GBAO. The article reports that on 27 June 2022, Investigator Khakim Shafiyev held Sarkorova’s elderly mother, ill with Covid and high fever, standing for five hours at Dushanbe’s Sino District Police Station in temperatures up to 40°C. The regime offered amnesty if the couple returned and asked Rahmon for pardon. The document compares this to the case of Sadriddin Mulloyev, who returned under a similar amnesty promise in February 2019 and received a 12-year sentence on 2 January 2020. Police raided a Protestant church in Khujand in early February 2024; official Doston Dilovarzoda denied it. Sources: Forum 18 interviews, UN Convention against Torture.