Tajikistan. Opponents of Rahmon's government disappear

From the publication in Geneva during the 57th Session of the Human Rights Council UN The report shows that the authorities in Dushanbe have done nothing about the recommendations from four years ago, when the UN Committee on Enforced Disappearances recommended that the government in Dushanbe clarify the fate of people who disappeared during the 1992-1997 civil war, when thousands of people disappeared without a trace.

“In almost every village in Tajikistan there is at least one family that still mourns a missing relative about whose fate they know nothing,” the report emphasizes.

Steve Sverdlov, activist for human rightsasked by the Tajik section of Radio Svoboda why this is happening, he replied: “The key duty of every country is to clarify the cases of missing citizens and search for them. Why (…) is President Rahmon not doing anything in this direction? Because reopening this bloody and confusing page in the history of Tajikistan will damage the reputation of the creator of peace and national unity, the Leader of the Nation – and such an image of Rahmon is created by his dictatorial regime.”

However, the report shows that opponents of the government continue to disappear. Over the past two or three years, dozens of citizens Tajikistanespecially activists and critics of the regime, dissidents and oppositionists, disappeared in Russia, Turkeyon BelarusIn Kazakhstan and other countries, and after several months of searching, they were “found” in Tajik prisons. Many of them disappeared completely, the report noted.

Tajikistan, located in Central Asia, has been ruled by President Emomali Rahmon since 1994. He does so in an autocratic manner, with any opposition suppressed and its activists either imprisoned or in exile. The country under Rahmon's rule struggles with widespread corruption and poverty – at least a third of the country's GDP is remittances from migrant workers.