ILGA-Europe: TJ bias-motivated violence annual review (2024)

The report states that Russia’s anti-LGBTI laws have significantly influenced Tajikistan, with numerous unofficial social-media reports documenting detentions or prosecutions perceived as targeting individuals based on sexuality or gender identity during 2024. It states that in the Sughd region more than ten cases were reported in which law-enforcement officers allegedly lured LGBTI individuals into fake meetings in order to enter them in a database, gather personal information and extort money. On equality and non-discrimination, it states that although a working group was established in 2020 to draft the country’s first Anti-Discrimination law including sexual orientation and gender identity as protected grounds, SOGI had been removed by the time the law was adopted in July 2022. The report states that since 2016 security forces reportedly maintain a registry of LGBTI people, subjecting them to systematic violations including forced HIV testing. It states that authorities have pursued cases under Article 125 (HIV transmission) and increasingly under Article 241 (pornography), and that an ECOM report documented at least 25 violations in 2024, in 15 of which the perpetrators were law-enforcement officers. The report states that over 700 NGOs were dissolved during 2022–2023 with an additional 53 liquidated in the first half of 2024, including “Equal Opportunity,” the only NGO dedicated to LGBTI equality. It states that human rights organisations documented more than 20 cases in 2024 involving arbitrary detention, device confiscation, torture, coerced testimony, blackmail, extortion and forced disclosure of sexual orientation or gender identity. The report also states that access to medical care and legal gender recognition remains severely limited.