HRW: Tajikistan Government critic facing prison

Published by Human Rights Watch (Toronto) on 4 August 2016, this news release reports that Tajik businessman and government critic Abubakr Azizkhodzhaev was sentenced on 7 July 2016 to two-and-a-half years in prison. The document reports that relatives learned of the verdict only on 2 August 2016 because the trial was closed even to immediate family and proceeded without the participation of defence counsel. The report states that Azizkhodzhaev had been detained since 26 February 2016 after criticising President Emomali Rahmon’s son-in-law for alleged corrupt business practices; he was charged under Article 189 of Tajikistan’s criminal code (“inciting national, racial, regional or religious hatred”). The article finds that the underlying dispute concerned Azizkhodzhaev’s printing business, whose government licence-plate contract was transferred to a firm owned by Shamsullo Sohibov, and his subsequent “Open Letter to [Tajikistan’s] President” alleging nepotism and corruption. The report states that on 9 June 2016 the European Parliament adopted a resolution on “prisoners of conscience” in Tajikistan specifically calling for his release. The document reports that relatives described limited access, undelivered food and clothing, burns seen on his body in the first week of May, and a limp in the second week of May; Azizkhodzhaev told relatives jail officials had beaten him. Steve Swerdlow, HRW Central Asia researcher, is quoted, and the report contextualises the case within Tajikistan’s worst political and religious crackdown since the 1992–1997 civil war.