HRW: No justice for GBAO crackdown (2yr)

Human Rights Watch dispatch by Syinat Sultanalieva, Researcher, Europe and Central Asia Division, published 15 May 2024, marking two years since the May 2022 crackdown in Tajikistan’s Gorno-Badakhshan Autonomous Region (GBAO). The document reports that protests began peacefully on 16 May 2022 in Khorog, the GBAO capital, with residents demanding an end to harassment and alleged persecution. Over the following two days, police dispersed protesters using rubber bullets and tear gas, with reports of excessive force, killings, and arbitrary detention and torture of more than two hundred protesters and local residents, who were then prosecuted in closed trials. HRW states authorities labelled the crackdown an “anti-terrorism operation” and that there has been no accountability. The dispatch documents that at least six civil society activists remain imprisoned, including Ulfatkhonim Mamadshoeva, 67, an independent journalist and civil rights activist sentenced to 21 years on charges of conspiring against the state and organising the protests, and Manuchehr Kholiqnazarov, director of the Lawyers Association of Pamir, sentenced to 16 years on charges of participation in a criminal organisation. The report states that Pamiris, described as a culturally, religiously and linguistically distinct ethnic minority, have been prohibited from speaking their languages in public and from hosting prayer meetings in their homes. At a high-level UN meeting, Tajikistan’s justice minister Muzaffar Ashuriyon denied that Pamiris are a distinct ethnic minority. The document reports hundreds of NGOs in the region and country have been forced to close.