1907 Solar Eclipse Expedition by Sergei Prokhudi-Gorskii, Russian Photographer
This is my little weekly newsletter on Tajikistan on Saturdays. Click on "Tajikistan" on the side bar to see past issues and posts.
Comments
Tajikistan's blockage of Facebook, local news sites, and Radio Liberty/Radio Free Europe this week drew expected outrage from all the right places and the US Embassy weighed in with a condemnation on -- appropriately -- Facebook.
But Tajik communications czar Beg Zuhurov bounced back to tell everyone today that he will unblock the popular social-networking site -- which isn't so reachable anyway in Tajikistan which has low Internet penetration. When? Well, just as soon as he clears some "technical difficulties". He also wanted us to know that the government's blockage was prompted by "the people" who were "outraged" at extremist statements appearing on the web. Zuhurov -- who sounds like he has a name that would make a good CEO of a start-up -- maybe he should privatize? -- said he would even take a personal meeting with Zuckerberg to discuss.
According to the Wall Street Journal, the head of Facebook in Russia, which oversees operations in Tajikistan (sigh) -- Ekaterina Skorobogatova -- said the company was aware of the situation but "we are not taking any active response". Russia has troops on the Tajik border but they are not available for putting Facebook back online!
This blockage is part of a long-standing tendency of the authoritarian government of Emomali Rahmon to block news sites whenever there is unrest or attacks by terrorists or various events -- and the excuse is that authorities need to keep a lid on extremism.
Somewhere between the extreme of blocking Facebook and online in general -- which we are told is supposed to help people become less violent and more connected -- and the claims that we have nothing to worry about from terrorists in Tajikistan lies the truth. Muhiddin Kabiri, Chairman of the Islamic Rebirth Party of Tajikistan, said in a recent talk at the Elliot School at GWU that "episodes in the Rasht Valley and in Gorno-Badakhshan have little to do with home-grown Islamic extremism" because they are related to the civil war. But...the civil war *was* about extremism as Islamists wanted to take power. Yes, we're always told that "Islam is merely the form which dissent takes in this country". Even so, it can take other forms and the forms of Islam it does take can be extreme.
Jacob Zenn reports at Jamestown Foundation, citing Interfax that on November 16, Russian prosecutors charged nine citizens of Tajikistan and Russia with membership in Hizb ut-Tahrir and possession of grenades, rifles, TNT, millions of dollars’ worth of counterfeit money, and written materials promoting extremism. We're told over and over by certain factions in the State Department (who also downplay the Benghazi events) and their allies in the think-tanking world that HuT is harmless and peaceful -- based on the group's own self-declarations of peace. And then every time we see any group actually caught performing some violent act, we're told those are people who left HuT or aren't really in HuT but in another group. Now, it's always possible that all those grenades and counterfeit bills were planted, but then, maybe they weren't.
Joshua Foust tweeted misleadingly -- unless you really focus on the scare quotes -- that
Faisal Devji said "civil society" is bad for democracy. What he means is that certain Islamic charities that have made the Pamiris dependent are bad for democracy. Foust tends to minimize these problems; but I can see Devji's point -- it's rather like the way Occupy Wall Street is going around preying on Hurricane Sandy victims now to make people sign up for their revolutionary movement. Sure, they do some good along the way and there may be really sincere helpers and really grateful aid recipients. But it's not the way to encourage the civic life outside of political extremism that helps create the climate for real democracy.
I remember a USAID woman who told me piously in the 1990s that she was bringing the warring sides of the Tajik civil war together by forcing them to go out together on garbage pick-up runs, and this immersion in municipal duty would take their minds off their abstract extreme positions. Leave aside the fact that people in Tajikistan didn't have discarded fast food wrappers and such as we have in the West to make up lots of garbage, the fact is, people had real issues (for them) in the civil war that still haven't gone away, and don't lend themselves merely to dismissal round the trash pick-up. USAID hopes never grow dim, however, and the US has gifted Tajikistan with more garbage trucks.
Tajikistan's outrageous practice of torture got some tough scrutiny this month in Geneva at the UN Commitee Against Torture. The CAT experts named names and cited bad practices such as holding people for more than 72 hours in detention, and without notification of relatives in the first 12 hours -- in all the post-Soviet states it is this stage of doznaniye (identification) where the torture often takes place to extract a confession. The remedies CAT proposes are pie-in-the-sky -- independent oversight and investigation bodies, registries, follow-up -- but that's okay because it outlines what a normal country would function like, and that's something to work toward some day. Meanwhile, the people advocating for these changes within Tajikistan and suffering reprisals even for contacting this very committee at the UN are given a boost of recognition.
Tajik Official Promises Zuckerberg Facebook to be Unblocked
Beg Zuhurov, head of the communications ministry in Tajikistan has promised Facebook's CEO Mark Zuckerberg through a translator that he will unblock the popular social network, Asia Plus reported December 1. (in Russian).
"I informed the respected Zuckerberg that most citizens of Tajikistan who had lived through the recent civil war and lost their relatives and friends were outraged at any extremist calls and lies disseminated through his social network," Interfax reporetd, citing Zukhurov.
He cited "technical reasons" for why there's still a hold-up in turning access to the site back on in Tajikistan.
Next Web and other news service reported November 27 that Tajikistan’s Office of Telecommunications has officially ordered all ISPs and mobile carriers in the country to block access to Facebook following a spoken order a day earlier.
By Monday evening, all 6 ISPs and 6 mobile carriers in Tajikistan complied to the orders, cutting local users from the world’s biggest social network. The head of the office Beg Zuhurov has explained the reasons behind blocking Facebook to RIA Novosti,
“I received many calls from citizens of Tajikistan, asking me to shut down this Facebook as a hotbed of slander. Unknown people there insult the leaders of the state. They are apparently being paid well for that.”
RFE/RL's Site in Tajikistan Blocked
The website of RFE/RL's Tajik Service appears to be blocked on the Internet in Tajikistan.
Asomuddin Atoev, the chairman of Tajikistan's Association of Internet
Service Providers, told RFE/RL on November 30 that several leading
service providers received SMS messages from Tajikistan's state-run
Communications Service requesting the blockage.
US Condemns Blocking of Facebook in Tajikistan
Amb. Susan Elliot condemned the blocking of Facebook and other sites on...where else? Facebook!
"The
U.S. Embassy is concerned with the apparent decision by the
Communications Service of the Republic of Tajikistan to block access to
Facebook, Radio Ozodi, and other Internet news sites. The United States
believes that the right of individuals to express their views freely is
universal, whether exercised in a public square or on the Internet.
We
urge the Government of Tajikistan to respect individual rights to
freedom of expression and lift its restriction on Facebook, Radio Ozodi,
and other blocked news sites."
Trial Resumes of Police Charged in Death of Detainee
November 29, 2012, Asia-Plus -- The trial has resumed in Dushanbe of an investigator from the police station in Dushanbe’s Shohmansour charged over the death of a detainee.
Bahromiddin Shodiyev died in hospital in later October last year ten days after he was interrogated at the police station in Dushanbe’s Shohmansour district.
Tajikistan Reviewed at UN Committee Against Torture
Tajikistan was reviewed at the recent session in Geneva of the UN's Committee Against Torture, the treaty body that examines compliance with the Convention Against Torture. The list of issues and the Tajik government's response, as well as the experts' conclusions can be found here (scroll down and look to the column on the far right). My summary is below the fold.
Hizb ut-Tahrir Takes Advantage of Ethnic Fault Lines in Tatarstan, Kyrgyzstan
Jacob Zenn reports at Jamestown Foundation: On November 16, Russian prosecutors charged nine citizens of Tajikistan
and Russia with membership in Hizb ut-Tahrir and possession of grenades,
rifles, TNT, millions of dollars’ worth of counterfeit money, and
written materials promoting extremism (Interfax [Moscow], November 16).
In the months prior, there were also several incidents in which Hizb
ut-Tahrir members and other religious extremists were arrested in the
Ural region oblast of Chelyabisnk. Chelyabinsk borders Kazakhstan as
well as the Republic of Bashkortostan whose population is more than half
composed of Muslim Tatars and Bashkirs.
Chelyabinsk is more
than 90 percent ethnic Russian, but has recently shown signs of
extremist influence. On October 20, counter-intelligence officers
searched an office where a female citizen was suspected of storing
Hizb-ut-Tahrir materials on her computer. And in August, five Hizb
ut-Tahrir members were arrested by the Federal Security Service (FSB)
for using material from Islamist websites and Hizb ut-Tahrir propaganda
to “brainwash” worshippers at religious classes about “toppling
non-Islamic governments” and “establishing a global caliphate” (Interfax
[Chelyabinsk], October 22; Interfax [Chelyabinsk], August 2).
Chairman of Islamic Rebirth Party on Current Situation in Tajikistan
The Central Asia Program at IERES, the the Elliott School of International Affairs, George Washington University, has this talk available online of Muhiddin Kabiri, Chairman of the Islamic Rebirth Party of Tajikistan, on the current political and religious situation in Tajikistan on October 16, 2012. The talk is available in its English translation.
Richard Weitz also has a write-up of the talk on EurasiaNet:
"Tajikistan has experienced bouts of internal violence in the past couple of years, but the bloody episodes in the Rasht Valley and in Gorno-Badakhshan have little to do with home-grown Islamic extremism, asserts Muhiddin Kabiri, the leader of the Islamic Renaissance Party of Tajikistan, the only legally operating, religiously oriented political group in Central Asia today."
US Government Delivers Garbage Trucks
December 1, 2012, Asia-Plus – On Friday November 30, USAID/Tajikistan Country Director Kathleen McDonald participated in the transfer of three specialized waste disposal trucks to the jamoats of Isfisor, Zarzamin, and Ghafurov, U.S. Embassy in Dushanbe said.The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) funded and implemented the project through its Local Development Initiative.
Every fifth person ill with HIV/AIDS in the Kulyab region in the south of Tajikistan has died, Asia Plus reported December 1. According to officials, 556 infected persons there have been registered, of which 119 have died. (in Russian).
International AIDs day in Tajikistan is helping to turn out people for voluntary testing, says Asia Plus. 654 cases have been found in the first 9 months of this year. 4,500 cases have been registered since 1991.
Is Some Civil Society in Tajikistan Not So Civic?In Current Intelligence there's an intriguing article by Faisal Devji, Reader in Indian History and Director of the Asian Studies Centre at St. Antony’s College, Oxford University titled "Dictatorship of Civil Society in Tajikistan":
"The fall of the Soviet Union gave rise to a narrative about the “transition” to democracy, for which the concept of civil society was seen as being foundational. Represented by new-fangled NGOs on the one hand, and on the other by more traditional religious or economic institutions, civil society was meant to establish peace in post-Soviet societies by limiting the reach of the state and indeed politics in general, seen as the source of conflict and violence there. I want to argue here that the reverse is actually the case. Civil society in its post-Cold War incarnation, which is very often funded from abroad, serves both to prevent the establishment of democratic politics, as well as increase the risks of conflict and so the possibility of violence."
Devji then elaborates on what he means by "civil society" -- the Aga Khan Development Network, a group of Islamic charities not without some controversy (a Glass Door review says non-Ismaili employees may have trouble advancing to senior positions).
"Having helped to save Pamiris from violence, pestilence and famine during the civil war, the AKDN, together with the Ismaili religious organizations that shadow it, ended up making them more vulnerable to attack. This is partly due to their entering into what appears to be an informal pact with the government, in which the latter is allowed to have its way while the AKDN and its religious shadows engage in murky financial and other transactions. A number of the Ismaili religious bodies, for example, seem to have no official existence in Tajikistan, though the funds they receive from abroad appear to be transmitted by the AKDN, even though its role is not meant to include this kind of support. These organizations then hire Pamiris who, in violation of Tajik law, possess no recognized employment status or identification, and can therefore be picked up at any time by the state’s security agencies."
Tajikistan's Difficult Development Path
Carnegie's Martha Brill Olcott and Johannes F. Linn from the Emerging Markets Forum discussed Martha’s latest book, Tajikistan’s Difficult Development Path. Relying on extensive fieldwork and empirical studies, the work is the first of its kind in systematically delving into the economic, political, and social outlook for the country.
Despite the increased level of expert and public attention to Central Asia stemming from the region’s strategic location and abundance of natural resources, Tajikistan has remained generally understudied both in the United States and in the international community more generally. A country of seven and a half million people, it faces some of the most difficult challenges amongst the post-Soviet states. Magnifying these challenges is the impending withdrawal of international forces from Afghanistan, which creates a particularly difficult security threat for neighboring Central Asian countries.
Mass Migration Good for Regime, Argues Political Scientist
EurasiaNet reports: It has long been clear that Tajikistan’s economy depends on cash remittances from labor migrants. In mid-November, the World Bank said remittances amounted to the equivalent of 47 percent of the country’s GDP, making Tajikistan the most remittance-dependent country in the world.
For years, observers have argued that migration – and the poverty driving it – is a threat to Tajikistan’s stability. But in an intriguing essay earlier this month for Radio Ozodi, Tajik political scientist Navruz Nekbakhtshoev argued that the exodus of labor migrants actually helps stabilize Tajikistan and enables President Imomali Rahmon to maintain his grip on power. Labor migrants – who comprise perhaps one out of every seven Tajiks – provide the cash that keeps the country afloat. But they are not home (most work in Russia) to protest the corruption, nepotism, or entrenched poverty. So the government, Nekbakhtshoev argues, effectively rids itself of an active population that might otherwise be malcontents at home. [To read the original essay, as posted by @eTajikstan in English, click here].
The UN Committee Against Torture, like other treaty bodies of the UN, is often overlooked by all but the most dedicated (and resourced) international human rights groups because engaging with it takes a great deal of preparation and stamina, and the UN is widely viewed as inconsequential if not in collusion with the autocrats of Central Asia.
Nevertheless, in November the CAT turned in a detailed and critical review of Tajikistan's notorious practices of torture, which serves to validate what local NGOs and journalists have been reporting. Despite Russia's efforts in this session to invalidate the use of NGO reports and references to individual cases if a country has not signed the optional protocol -- in a bid to distract from its own bad practices during this review -- the CAT chair reiterated that individual cases are fair game for the review, and NGO reports will be considered seriously.
The final conclusions of the experts include their usual critiques of lack of sufficient definition of torture in the criminal code and absence of legal safeguards at the outset of arrests. The experts urged that the 72-hour period of police custody be reduced and that the 12-hour period of notification be repealed to notify family members earlier. They also called for pre-trial detention not to be extended when the prosecution fails to make its case.
The Committee is seriously concerned by numerous and consistent allegations, corroborated by various sources, of routine use of torture and ill-treatment of suspects, principally to extract confessions to be used in criminal proceedings, primarily during the first hours of interrogation in police custody as well as in temporary and pre-trial detention facilities run by the State Committee of National Security and the Department for the Fight against Organized Crime
CAT experts called for a central registry and video tapings of interrogations -- not very realistic proposals at all, but given that these are the norm in other states, it's worth reiterating even with Tajikistan for the sake of long-term efforts at reform.
CAT didn't shrink from naming names, despite efforts by Russia to discourage this generically on principle, and the reluctance of Tajik officials to provide details:
The Committee is concerned at reports from the State party and non-governmental organizations on several instances of deaths in custody, including the deaths of Messrs. Ismonboy Boboev, Usman Boboev, Khurshed Bobokalonov, Alovuddin Davlatov, Murodov Dilshodbek, Hamza Ikromzoda, Khamzali Ikromzoda, Safarali Sangov, Bahromiddin Shodiev and at the lack of effective and impartial investigations into these cases.
Best of all, CAT highlighted the mistreatment of human rights defenders, upon whom we all rely to get any information out of this closed society -- again, despite resistance to taking on the issue:
The Committee is concerned by reports that victims of and witnesses to torture and ill-treatment do not file complaints with the authorities for fear of reprisals and lack of adequate follow-up. Additionally, while noting the removal of libel and insult from the Criminal Code in July 2012, the Committee remains concerned by reports of harassment and intimidation of journalists and human rights defenders who report on torture and ill-treatment. In particular, the Committee is concerned by the information received that families and victims of alleged torture, journalists, lawyers, medical experts and human rights defenders who raised concerns with the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture and other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment during his visit to Tajikistan in May 2012 have subsequently faced harassment and intimidation from authorities. Furthermore, while the Committee takes note of the information provided by the delegation, it is nevertheless concerned by the recent closure of the Association of Young Lawyers of Tajikistan (Amparo), a member of the Coalition Against Torture that engaged with the Special Rapporteur during his visit, pursuant to a motion filed by the Ministry of Justice to dissolve the organization on administrative grounds and a decision taken by the Khujand City Court on 24 October 2012 to this effect.
Again, the remedy for these awful reprisals is to expect -- rather naively -- that the same government that has presided over these attacks will then try to mitigate them. Even so, part of validating the problem is suggesting a remedy that in fact highlights the absence of impartial bodies in the Tajik government -- which the Tajiks in fact had pledged to create in their last UN session:
The Committee urges the State party to establish a fully resourced, effective, independent and accessible mechanism to investigate and facilitate the submission of complaints by victims and witnesses of torture and ill-treatment to public authorities, as pledged by the State party following the Universal Periodic Review in March 2012.
For anyone seriously following the issue of mistreatment in prisons and torture of all kinds, this body of material on the website is invaluable, as it has the state report as well as the alternative NGO reports and then the expert conclusions after weighing all the statements. You can also get the video of the session in Russian here.
