Ladies and gentlemen!
I am from Tajikistan, and more than 200 of my colleagues are currently in prisons in Tajikistan, and two of them were sentenced to life imprisonment. The only fault of these prisoners was that they were members of the opposition party of Tajikistan. The Tajik authorities sentenced them to many years prison on false and groundless charges in 2015, and number of them were killed in prisons for various reasons.
The Tajik authorities admitted to imprisoning 113 people accused of membership in the Muslim Brotherhood in 2020, but the evidences show that the authorities detained, tortured and imprisoned around 500 people on these charges.
In addition, more than 200 others, natives of Badakhshan were arrested, tortured and sent to prison for many years in May and June of this year.
Ladies and gentlemen!
In short, Tajik prisons are full of political activists, journalists and free-thinking intellectuals, and one person, Emomali Rahmon and his family members have been in power for about 30 years.
Unfortunately, despite of this many political prisoners in the country and the dictatorship of this family government, most of Western countries and international organizations closely cooperate with them and do not say anything about the grave violation of human rights in their meetings and conversations, but sometimes even praise these dictators.
Therefore, I suggest as following:
1) I demand the United States government to implement the Global Magnitsky Human Rights Accountability Act against Tajik officials who are directly involved in human rights violations, torture and corruption;
2) I demand the OSCE, especially the democratic countries, members of this influential international organization, to implement the Moscow Mechanism on the human rights situation in Tajikistan. I think that the implementation of the Moscow Mechanism will be very effective, and some Western countries are ready to take such a step.
3) I have a personal request. I have personally suffered a lot from Emomali Rahmon’s regime and I am a victim of this regime’s oppression. When I see a high-ranking Western diplomat in Tajikistan not saying anything about the violation of human rights, but, on the contrary, praising some members of the Rahmon family and calling him “a star”, I take it very painfully. I have a personal request to all democratic governments and international organizations to instruct their diplomats not praise these dictators, at least, not publicly.
Thank you for your attention!
Abdusattor Boboev, Chairman of Civic Committee for Rescue of Political Hostages and Prisoners in Tajikistan at Warsaw Human Dimension Conference – OSCE