UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention Again Issues Opinions Against Tajikistan

The United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention (WGAD) issued two opinions after its March 2024 session concerning Tajikistan. Both urged Dushanbe to unconditionally release imprisoned human rights defenders.

All five individuals whose cases were considered by the WGAD are Pamiri: journalist and human rights activist Ulfatkhonim Mamadshoeva, former politician and well-known civic activist Sorbon Yunoev, and human rights lawyers Faromuz Irgashov, Khursandsho Mamadshoev, and Manuchehr Kholiqnazarov.

Their detentions are rooted in the unrest that erupted in Gorno-Badakhshan Autonomous Oblast (GBAO) in November 2021 following the killing of a local man by police and came to violent head in a bloody crackdown – branded as an anti-terrorist operation – in May 2022.

In the years since, Dushanbe has moved to tighten control over the autonomous region. The pressure fits into a common and cyclical pattern in which the center, threatened by the independence and disdain of the outer regions, sharply tugs the reins of power.

As Till Mostowlansky, an anthropologist and author of the 2017 book “Azan on the Moon: Entangling Modernity along Tajikistan’s Pamir Highway,” wrote in a 2019 article for this magazine, “Unrest in the Pamir region is rooted in Gorno-Badakhshan’s long history of being integral to Tajikistan as a nation, but still not quite fitting into it.” GBAO constitutes about  45 percent of Tajikistan’s territory, but only a mere fraction of its population. In the steep mountains of the country’s eastern regions, Dushanbe says it worries about terrorists and separatists; the people of the Pamirs worry about electricity, their children moving out of the region forever, and the possible death of their culture.

Since the crackdown and ensuing spate of arrests in 2022, GBAO has fallen into an eerie, fear-induced, quiet. The WGAD opinions, however, serve as a reminder that not everyone has forgotten the Pamirs.

Mere Assertions

The WGAD opinions are remarkable documents. On the surface, they provide a he-said, she-said narrative in which the petitioner, the source, outlines why they think the government in question violated the rights of specific individuals, and the government responds with its own version of the story. In the end, the working group issues an opinion in the matter, closely following a well-defined set of categories and using excruciatingly diplomatic language.

Although this sentence is form-standard, one cannot help but read the following with a tinge of sass: “Mere assertions by the Government that lawful procedures have been followed are not sufficient to rebut the source’s allegations.” The same sentence appears in both opinions.

And what a bevy of mere assertions the government of Tajikistan made.

In response to the source’s allegations regarding the detentions of Irgashov, Mamadshoev, and Kholiknazarov, the Tajik government defended its actions and claimed “the detainees were not prosecuted for their political, social, or human rights views but for committing criminal offenses unrelated to their human rights activities.” In defending its decision to classify the cases, the government claimed they “contained information constituting State secrets and their disclosure would affect security interests.”

And then the Tajik government goes on a journey, charting a grand conspiracy that spans decades and illustrates the concerted effort to rewrite Tajikistan’s history.

Although the cases under consideration dates to 2022, Dushanbe jumps back 30 years to 1992, alleging that the Islamic Renaissance Party (IRPT) and other “extremist organizations,” some based in GBAO, “led a coup d’état, seizing power by force and triggering a civil war in the country.” Then “organized criminal groups” got into the drug smuggling business and asserted control over the GBAO population.

“In this connection, each criminal group made the local people live in fear and brutally cracked down on their attempts to speak out…” Dushanbe asserts.

Ironically, this is exactly how Paimiris have described the actions of the Tajik government.

Dushanbe also claims that the same “criminal groups” are preventing locals from acting “to support the national Government’s policies.” The response mentions the various waves of unrest that have rocked Tajikistan and GBAO, from the murder of a regional State Committee for National Security chief in 2012 to the 2015 attacks in Vahdat and Dushanbe – which the Tajik government claims was another IRPT coup attempt. The 2015 attacks gave Dushanbe a perfect excuse to close the IRPT down.

The government response to the WGAD casts the IRPT as unequivocally a terrorist organization and characterizes the National Alliance of Tajikistan – an opposition alliance formed among the exiled diaspora in Europe – as making continued attempts to destabilize Tajikistan.

Then the government gets back to the cases at hand, alleging that Commission 44, which the three men helped establish to investigate the extrajudicial killing that had triggered the latest round of unrest and liaise with the government and law enforcement, was simply the latest criminal effort by Dushanbe’s foes.

In countering, the petitioning source notes that Irgashov was 2 years old when the Tajik civil war broke out and had no affiliations with any opposition groups in that period. All three men had notable records of working to bridge the divides between the Pamiris and the central government – for example, by participating in a police reform program in 2016.

When it comes to Commission 44 the Tajik government’s allegation that the group is a criminal one is easily turned back on Dushanbe. The source notes that in April 2022, Commission 44’s last press conference before the crackdown was held “jointly with representatives of law enforcement and local government…” If it was a criminal enterprise, the latest in a long line of groups with malintent, why were Tajik officials working closely with it right up until its demise?

A Matter of Opinion

The WGAD’s two opinions conclude that the detentions of Mamadshoeva, Yunoev, Irgashov, Mamadshoev, and Kholiqnazarov violated a litany of human rights provisions that the Tajik government has technically agreed to uphold via various U.N. conventions and has consistently failed to respect.

“The Working Group observes that it has already examined in its previous cases against Tajikistan the same pattern in the attitude of the authorities towards those who belong to opposition parties or human rights activities. This pattern has been confirmed by numerous international bodies in their reports on Tajikistan,” WGAD notes.

In another section, the opinion argues that the conflicting reports – the source claiming persecution, and the government claiming legitimate action – “ should be assessed against the backdrop of the current situation of human rights and media freedom in Tajikistan.” The vast gap between the government’s version of events and those of a wide array of non-government sources is too great to be chalked up to a simple difference of opinion. Sometimes the two sides of an argument are not equal in weight; one side is lying.

Dushanbe’s pattern of repression is easily discernible, with countless examples of the Tajik government tweaking narratives to cast itself as the victim. The United Nations’ various special procedures and special rapporteurs are not fooled. The real question, however, is what can be done. Dushanbe is comfortable living with its own delusions and the likelihood of the government acceeding to the WGAD’s urging that these people be released from prison is miniscule.