TAJIKISTAN

World Report 2001 Entry

World Report 2000 Entry

World Report 1999 Entry

World Report 1998 Entry

Tajikistan: Freedom of Expression Still Threatened
Despite legislation protecting freedom of speech and the press in Tajikistan, in practice freedom of expression is severely limited. For six years major opposition parties and their newspapers were banned. The government of Tajikistan continues to employ a variety of tactics to limit political content in the remaining media. It intimidates journalists and editors through threats and "guidance" sessions. Government-run printers often refuse to print newspapers that run controversial material. Foreign journalists whose reporting displeases the government have lost their accreditation. A burdensome licensing process has kept independent radio stations off the airwaves. As this report went to press, on the eve of Tajikistan's November 6 presidential elections, the government had quashed all but one independent newspaper in the capital covering political affairs.
(D1114) 11/99, 31pp., $5.00

Tajikistan -- Leninabad: Crackdown in the North
Five years of civil war in Tajikistan were formally brought to a close on June 27, 1997, when a peace accord was signed between the government and the United Tajik Opposition (UTO). A major force, however, was left out of the peace negotiations: the political opposition based in Tajikistan's northern region, Leninabad. Beginning in 1996, when the Leninabadi opposition sought a prominent role in the peace process, the Tajikistan government responded with a campaign to discredit that opposition's legitimacy and influence by cracking down on the region's political parties, arresting and harassing activists or suspected activists, and censoring from the media most information about the Leninabad political movement. A wave of demonstrations in Leninabad in May 1996 demanded, among other things, the removal of officials of southern Tajik origin-currently the dominant political clan in Tajikistan-from their police and government posts in the region. Freedom of expression is severely limited in Tajikistan generally, and in this context the government arrested and harassed journalists and threatened newspapers in order to limit coverage of the Leninabadi political movement and controversial events in the north.
(D1002) 4/98, 31pp., $5.00
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TAJIK REFUGEES IN NORTHERN AFGHANISTAN
Obstacles to Repatriation
In 1992, a devastating civil war in Tajikistan led to the deaths of more than 20,000 (with some estimates as high as 50,000) and created more than 800,000 displaced persons and refugees. Although the human rights situation in Tajikistan has in many respects steadily improved since the end of the war in December 1992, fighting between the Tajik government and opposition forces continues sporadically in some areas, and tension between the antagonists still exists in several parts of the country, creating an atmosphere of fear. In December 1995, some 26,000 of the refugees who fled to northern Afghanistan remain there.
(D806) 5/96, 35 pp., $5.00/£2.95
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RETURN TO TAJIKISTAN
Continued Regional and Ethnic Tensions
Two years after a bloody and devastating civil war, the human rights situation in Tajikistan remains precarious. Since the spring of 1993, refugees and internally displaced persons have returned to their villages in the southern province of Khatlon, from which the largest number of people were displaced following the war. While the sheer volume of human rights abuses dropped dramatically in 1994, returnees in certain regions remain highly fearful and are harassed, threatened, beaten and even murdered. The reintegration process has been hampered by the fact that thousands of those who returned have now spent two winters without adequate shelter.
(D709) 5/95, 30 pp., $5.00/£2.95
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Political Prisoners in Tajikistan
In this report, we called upon the government of Tajikistan to release all individuals imprisoned or detained for the peaceful expression of political views, and to provide new and fair trials to those convicted of a crime in the absence of internationally guaranteed rights to due process. In an agreement signed by the government and the opposition in September 1994, the government agreed to release, by October 17, all “opposition supporters who are in prison.” By the time the deadline arrived, however, not a single prisoner had been released.
(D614) 10/94, 10 pp., $3.00/£1.95
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HUMAN RIGHTS IN TAJIKISTAN
On the Eve of Presidential Elections
In its 19th session, held on July 20-21, 1994, the Supreme Soviet of the Republic of Tajikistan voted to hold presidential elections and a constitutional referendum on September 25, 1994. On September 7, however, it voted to postpone both the elections and the constitutional referendum until November 6, 1994. We support the transition to a democratic government in Tajikistan, but believed at the time that conditions in Tajikistan did not permit free and democratic elections. Accordingly, we urged the government to address the absence of basic civil and political rights.
(D613) 10/94, 13 pp., $3.00/£1.95
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HUMAN RIGHTS IN TAJIKISTAN
In the Wake of Civil War
During a six-month period in 1992, Tajikistan’s civil war claimed as many as 20,000 lives and displaced over 400,000 people. The government of Tajikistan has taken certain steps toward re-establishing law and order in its troubled country; at the same time, however, it has broken its international human rights commitments and tolerated gross violations of human rights, including summary executions, disappearances, “informal prisons” and ethnic-regional discrimination.
(1193) 12/93, 88 pp., ISBN 1-56432-119-3, $7.00/£5.95
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CONFLICT IN THE SOVIET UNION
Tadzhikistan
An analysis of the Soviet army’s use of lethal force against initially peaceful protestors in the Soviet Central Asian republic of Tadzhikistan in mid-February 1990, this report is based on numerous interviews with local sources conducted in the republic in May and November 1991. It also draws on the published results of an official Tadzhikistan investigatory commission as well as on Soviet video footage of the demonstrations. The report also considers various social and political problems in Tadzhikistan which led to the massive popular protest of 1990, as well as the consequences of those events in which 22 people died.
(0286) 8/91, 88 pp., ISBN 1-56432-028-6, $7.00/£5.95
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