The Tajik authorities should release journalists Ulfathonim Mamadshoeva and Khushruz Dzhumaev, drop all charges against them and stop the secret persecution of journalists, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), an American independent non-profit non-governmental organization based in New York, said on Thursday, August 11.
The secret persecution in the Committee is understood as the investigation of criminal cases against journalists classified as “secret”. The statement notes that “the authorities classified the cases against both journalists as classified and forced their lawyers to sign a non-disclosure agreement, so neither the media nor the families of the journalists received reliable information about any charges against them.”
To recall, on May 18, officials from the State Committee for National Security detained Mamadshoeva, a freelance journalist and human rights activist, at her home in Dushanbe. The next day, members of the Department for Combating Organized Crime of the Ministry of Internal Affairs in Dushanbe detained Dzhumaev, a freelance journalist and blogger known under the pseudonym Khushom Gulyam, who wrote about the history, languages, and culture of the Pamirs.
After the protests on November 25-28, 2021, he moved from Dushanbe to GBAO and actively helped the members of Commission 44, and ran the Pomere.info platform. However, in March 2022, he was summoned for a “talk” to the local State Committee for National Security, and after that, Dzhumaev left Badakhshan and returned to Dushanbe, where he was detained on May 19.
The detentions of Mamadshoeva and Dzhumaev came immediately after the start of an “anti-terrorist operation” launched by the Tajik authorities on May 18 to crush protests “in ethnically and religiously segregated Gorno-Badakhshan, where many members of the Pamir minority live, to which both journalists belong. By doing so, says CPJ, “the authorities were trying to suppress independent reporting on the protests and the government operation.”
Both journalists are under arrest for a period of two months, and according to CPJ sources, the criminal cases against them will be brought to court in the very near future.
Mamadshoeva is accused of public calls to overthrow the government and organize mass riots in the Gorno-Badakhshan Autonomous Region and faces 15 to 20 years in prison. Regarding Dzhumaev, writes CPJ, “the authorities did not make any public statements about the reasons for the arrest,” but informed sources said that he is also accused of publicly calling for the overthrow of the government and faces eight to 15 years in prison under Part 2 of Article 307 of the Criminal Code.
The president of the Committee to Protect Journalists, Jody Ginsberg, demanded that Ulfathonim Mamadshoeva and Khushruz Dzhumaev be immediately released, all charges against them dropped, and the veil of secrecy about their cases be lifted. “Pamir journalists, and indeed all journalists in Tajikistan, should be able to freely carry out their work against the backdrop of government actions in the Gorno-Badakhshan Autonomous Region,” she said.
The statement of the Committee notes that they sent electronic requests to the Prosecutor General’s Office and the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Tajikistan regarding the detained journalists, but did not receive any answers.
