A detention centre in Tajikistan
The international organisation Human Rights Watch has reported a worsening situation for human rights in Tajikistan in its yearly report on human rights around the world.
HRW notes the continuation of repression against government critics and their sentencing to prison terms. Freedom of speech is severely restricted, and the internet is heavily censored. Relatives of dissidents who have left the country are also subjected to harassment.
The report also highlights the forced return of opposition activists from abroad. Mention is made of the former regional head of the Islamic Renaissance Party of Tajikistan (IRPT, officially banned in the country) Naimjon Samiev (according to rights advocates, he was abducted and returned home from Russia, although Samiev himself later denied this on camera prior to being sentenced to 15 years in jail), the former IRPT activist Amrullo Magzumov, and one of the founders of the oppositional Group 24 Sharofiddin Gadoev (whose abduction resulted in a widely-publicised scandal, following which he was permitted to leave the country).
The report points to a number of problems in Kyrgyzstan (insufficient defence of women’s rights and pressure on civil society), Uzbekistan (while the situation for human rights has improved in the country in recent years, many people, according to HRW, remain in prison on false charges, and the country lacks “genuine political pluralism”), Kazakhstan (according to the organisation there was an “increased harassment of perceived or actual” opposition supporters) and Turkmenistan (the situation for human rights, HRW notes, remains “dire” in the “isolated and repressive country under the authoritarian rule of President Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov and his associates”).
The organisation also devoted a detailed report to China, labelling the country a global threat to human rights. According to HRW, it is not only a matter of the Chinese government’s harsh system of control and repression inside the country, but of China’s concerted “attack on the global system for enforcing human rights”.
Referring to the “nightmarish system” of surveillance imposed on the inhabitants of Xinjiang, HRW notes that it may serve as an example to other countries. “Few governments have the capacity to deploy the human resources that China has devoted to Xinjiang, but the technology is becoming off-the-shelf, attractive to governments with weak privacy protections,” write the report’s authors.
Further, according to the report, in an attempt to avoid a global backlash against its practices at home, the Chinese government is working to undermine the international institutions designed to protect human rights, intimidating other governments into joining it. “Beijing’s approach puts it at odds with the very purpose of international human rights,” claims HRW. “Where others see people facing persecution whose rights need defending, China’s rulers see a potential precedent of rights enforcement that could return to haunt them. Using its voice, its influence, and sometimes its Security Council veto, the Chinese government seeks to block United Nations measures to protect some of the world’s most persecuted people.”
