DUSHANBE — Tajik President Emomali Rahmon has called on prominent citizens in the Central Asian nation to outline a long-term «national development concept» that would establish a «democratic and secular country based on the rule of law.»

Speaking at an annual meeting with leading scholars, writers, artists and other figures on March 19, the long-ruling Rahmon said the development concept would guide the Central Asian country through the year 2050 and must be based firmly on its national interests.

He said it must «be mainly focused on the development of secularism and national and secular thinking.»

The emphasis on secularism follows an upsurge in arrests of alleged Islamist extremists and an election that pushed the poor, predominantly Muslim country’s only registered religious party out of parliament for the first time since the 1990s.

The Islamic Renaissance Party (IRPT) had come under increasing pressure from the authorities before failing to win enough votes to secure a place in parliament in a March 1 election marred by fraud allegations and criticized by international observers.

Rahmon’s speech coincided with a report that the trial of five alleged members of a banned Islamic group, Jamaat Ansarullah, had started in Tajikistan’s northern Sughd region on March 19.

The trial is the latest of several court proceedings across the poor, predominantly Muslim, country targeting alleged members of banned Islamic groups in recent months.

Tajik officials have also said recently that hundreds of Tajik citizens are fighting alongside Islamist militants in Syria and Iraq.

In December, Rahmon publicly branded the Islamic State militant group in the Middle East a «modern plague» that poses a «threat to global security.»

Rahmon has called young Tajiks who have left to fight in the Middle East «a potential threat to Tajikistan,» saying they could spread radical Islam in the country after returning home from Syria and Iraq.

Last month, Tajikistan’s newly appointed prosecutor-general, Yusuf Rahmonov, said that 41 criminal cases, mainly in absentia, had been launched against 85 Tajik nationals suspected of fighting or having fought in the Middle East.

Rahmonov also said that a special center tasked with investigating recruitment cases would begin operating soon.

Russian Deputy Defense Minister Anatoly Antonov said on March 5 that Moscow plans to bolster Russia’s military bases in Tajikistan and neighboring Kyrgyzstan due to an increase of activity by what he called «units» of the militant group Islamic State in Central Asia.

http://www.rferl.org/content/tajik-leader-call-for-national-concpet-for-development/26909599.html

Tajik President Emomali Rahmon has appointed his eldest son, Rustam Emomali, to head the Central Asian nation’s anticorruption agency.

Emomali, 27, was appointed on March 16 as director of the State Agency For Financial Control and Measures Against Corruption.

Emomali had been running Tajikistan’s Customs Service since late 2013.

His predcessor at the anticorruption agency, Abdufattoh Ghoib, was named as the Customs Service’s new chief.

Corruption is a major problem in Tajikistan and other former Soviet republics.

In other appointments, the chief of the government’s Committee for Television and Radio Broadcasting, Asadullo Rahmon, became a presidential adviser.

Rahmon, who is not related t the president, replaced Abdujabbor Azizi, who was elected to parliament on March 1.

Deputy Culture Minister Mahmadsaid Pirov was appointed as the new chief of the government’s Committee for Television and Radio Broadcasting.

http://www.rferl.org/content/tajik-prsident-appoints-son-to-head-anticorruption-agency/26903683.html

DUSHANBE — Two Tajik activists have each been sentenced to 16 1/2 years in prison for being members of a banned political opposition movement.

A Dushanbe court on March 13 found Firdavs Muhiddinov and Farhod Karimov guilty of insulting President Emomali Rahmon, being members of the banned opposition movement Group 24, and plotting to overthrow the government before handing them their sentences.

Karimov was arrested last year after police searched his computer and found photos they said «insulted» Rahmon.

Muhiddinov was detained for appearing online at a gathering of Tajik migrants in Russia and calling for Rahmon’s resignation.

Both men pleaded «partially guilty» and denied any association with Group 24, which was founded by fugitive tycoon Umarali Quvatov, who was shot dead in Istanbul on March 5.

The group was banned in October after being labelled an extremist group.

Activist Umedjon Solehov was sentenced last week to 17 1/2 years in prison on the same charges.

http://www.rferl.org/content/tajik-acrtivists-sentenced-for-association-with-quvatov/26899417.html

Media advocacy watchdog Reporters Without Borders (RSF) says it is unblocking access to nine news websites in an effort to combat online censorship by governments that violate human rights.

RSF said the move, dubbed Operation Collateral Freedom and launched on March 12 to mark the World Day Against Cyber-Censorship, will make the sites available in the 11 countries where they are currently banned.

The group said in a statement that it will unblock websites banned in countries designated as «Enemies of the Internet» by setting up mirrors, or copies, of the websites, allowing people there to access them.

The 11 countries are Russia, China, Iran, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Vietnam, Cuba, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates.

The websites include Grani.ru, which is blocked in Russia; Fergananews.com, which is blocked in Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan; Gooya News, blocked in Iran; and the Tibet Post, which is blocked in China.

The group said it is using the technique known as “mirroring” to duplicate the banned websites and post the copies on the Internet servers of corporations such as Amazon, Microsoft, and Google.

RSF said the economic and political cost of blocking the servers of these Internet giants to render the mirror sites inaccessible would be too high.

«Our nine sites are therefore protected against censorship,» it said.

The Paris-based group said it is renting bandwidth for Operation Collateral Freedom, which will «gradually be used up as more and more people visit the mirror sites.»

RSF said it would maintain the sites at its own expense for several months and appealed to Internet users to donate money to help pay for additional bandwidth afterwards, «so that the mirror sites will be available for as long as possible.»

http://www.rferl.org/content/media-freedom-reporters-without-borders/26896537.html

Tajik opposition Group 24 movement has elected its new leadership after its founding leader Umarali Quvatov was shot dead in Istanbul, Turkey last week.

Quvatov’s cousin and business associate, 29-year-old Sharofiddin Gadoev, who has been living in self-imposed exile in Spain since 2013, told RFE/RL that the leading council of the Group 24 held its gathering on March 12 and elected him the movement’s new leader.

A Tajik businessman, Sobir Valiev, 26, was elected Gadoev’s deputy.

Gadoev declined to say where exactly the gathering was held. The majority of the movement’s members are living outside Tajikistan.

Gadoev also said that the Group 24 will continue its political activities opposing Tajik President Emomali Rahmon.

Tajik authorities banned Group 24 branding it extremist after the group called on Tajik citizens for anti-government protests in Dushanbe in October.

Two alleged members of the group are currently on trial. Last week, one activist was sentenced to 17 1/2 years in jail for being a member of Group 24.

Tajik opposition politician and businessman Umarali Quvatov was buried on March 9 in Istanbul, where media reports said three Tajik men were arrested on suspicion of involvement in his killing last week.

Quvatov’s relatives told RFE/RL that the burial at the Kilyos cemetery followed the janaza, the Islamic funeral prayer ceremony, conducted at the Fatih Mosque in Istanbul’s Fatih district.

Mourners unfurled a banner that said: «The killer of Tajik opposition leader, martyr Umarali Quvatov, is dictator Emomali Rahmon,» the Tajik president.

Quvatov’s wife, Kumriniso Hafizova, told RFE/RL on March 8 that her husband had been shot in the head on a street in Istanbul by an unidentified attacker last week.

Hafizova confirmed earlier reports saying that on March 5, she, Quvatov, and their two sons had been invited for dinner at the house of Sulaimon Qayumov, a 30-year-old Tajik citizen who has been residing in Istanbul for several months.

Hafizova said that she, Quvatov, and their sons felt sick after consuming food offered by Qayumov and rushed out for fresh air. An ambulance eventually arrived at around 10:30 p.m.

When they were outside, Hafizova said, an unidentified man approached Quvatov from behind and fired a single shot to his head before fleeing.

Quvatov died at the scene.

Hafizova and her two sons were hospitalized and diagnosed with poisoning. She was later released to take care of three other children who remain at home, while her two sons continue to receive treatment in the clinic.

According to Hafizova, an autopsy concluded that Quvatov was poisoned before being shot. It is not clear what substance was used to poison Quvatov and his family members.

Amnesty International issued a statement on March 6 calling on Turkish authorities to «lead an impartial, effective, and prompt investigation into» Quvatov’s «unlawful killing, reveal the full truth, and bring the perpetrators to justice.»

Turkish media reports said on March 9 that three Tajik men, including Qayumov, had been arrested on suspicion of involvement in Quvatov’s killing.

A tycoon who once had close ties with President Emomali Rahmon but became an opponent, Quvatov was wanted by Dushanbe on fraud charges that he said were politically motivated.

Quvatov, 47, left Tajikistan in 2012 and stayed in Russia and the United Arab Emirates before moving to Turkey.

Tajikistan formally requested his extradition in January.

Quvatov had worked for a company trading oil products that was headed by a relative of Rahmon.

After leaving Tajikistan, he accused Rahmon, who has governed Tajikistan since 1992, of corruption and nepotism.

Group 24, which Quvatov founded from abroad, has come under increasing pressure in the past year as Rahmon has sought to consolidate his grip on the poor former Soviet republic.

Tajikistan’s Supreme Court banned Group 24 in October, after the government labeled it an extremist group.

Tajik authorities had blocked hundreds of websites after Group 24 used social media to call for an antigovernment protest in Dushanbe on October 10.

Tajik Interior Minister Ramazon Rahimzoda said in January that several Group 24 members have been detained in Russia and were expected to be extradited to Tajikistan, and that three more associates of Quvatov were arrested in Tajikistan.

At least two Tajik activists have been sentenced to lengthy prison terms since October for their alleged association with Quvatov’s group.

Quvatov was killed four days after parliamentary elections that were marred by suspected violations, criticized by international observers, and dismissed as a «farce» by the Communist Party leader.

Rahmon’s party won the most votes, according to the official results, and no opposition party won any seats.

With reporting by Hurriyet and Haberturk.com

http://www.rferl.org/content/slain-tajik-opposition-tycoon-to-be-buried-in-istanbul/26889471.html

RFE/RL’s Kazakh Service has been blocked in Kazakhstan after reporting on a video showing Kazakh militants calling for others to join the Islamic State (IS) group in Syria.

Radio Azattyq said on March 5 that the «Latest News» sections of both its Kazakh- and Russian-language sites were blocked on March 4 soon after the report on the video was published.

While previous reports by Radio Azattyq on Kazakh militants in Syria have also been blocked in Kazakhstan, the service said that this is the first time that the entire «Latest News» sections of both the Kazakh Service’s websites have been taken offline.

Radio Azattyq’s report examines a video that shows militants from a Kazakh jamaat, or fighting faction, within the IS group. One of the militants, who is identified as Abu Muaz, calls on Kazakhs to join them and come to Syria to fight.

A version of the video with Russian subtitles appeared in August 2014 on the IS group’s official Russian-language propaganda site, H-Center. The video was removed from YouTube very shortly after it was published, but a version of it has recently been re-uploaded and shared on social networks.

Radio Azattyq translated some of the video from Kazakh and reported that Abu Muaz criticized religious scholars in Kazakhstan for «poisoning» religion. «A lot of people come to us in Syria with their entire families and replenish our ranks,» Abu Muaz says.

Abu Muaz’s fluent Kazakh suggests that he is a native of Kazakhstan, Radio Azattyq said.

However, Radio Azattyq reported that the report had been blocked in Almaty and Astana on March 4, and that Kazakhtelecom, the largest Internet service provider in Kazakhstan, refused to comment.

Kazakh Authorities In Denial

This is not the first time that Kazakhstan has moved to block news sites from reporting on videos of Kazakh IS militants in Syria.

In November, Kazakhstan banned an IS video that showed Kazakh nationals, including children, participating in military and ideological drills in Syria.

The fallout from Kazakhstan’s banning of the video even reached neighboring Kyrgyzstan, where news sites showing the video were also blocked. One site accused the government of punishing reporters over fears of a backlash from Kazakhstan over the IS video.

Kazakhstan also tried to distance itself from reports that a Kazakh national had been killed by IS militants in Syria on suspicion of being a Russian spy. After a video showing a man identified as a Kazakh being apparently shotalongside another «spy,» Kazakhstan’s intelligence agency issued a statement denying that the victims were Kazakh nationals.

However, the extensive blocking of Radio Azattyq’s Russian and Kazakh sites suggests that the Kazakh authorities are beginning to crack down even harder on news outlets and journalists who report on Kazakh militants in Syria and Iraq.

The signs of the increased crackdown come amid ever-growing fears in Kazakhstan and elsewhere in Central Asia about the threat posed by the IS group to domestic security, as well as a sense that Astana does not want to broadcast the fact that Kazakh nationals are present, or even prolific, in the militant group.

The blocking comes after reports that a Kazakh teenager, Akhror Saidakhmetov, has been arrested in the United States on suspicion of aiding the IS group. While the Kazakh Interior Ministry issued a statement saying it was willing to help the U.S. authorities investigate Saidakhmetov, officials also appeared to distance themselves from the case, saying that the teen had left Kazakhstan in 2011 and had not returned.

— Joanna Paraszczuk

http://www.rferl.org/content/kazakhstan-blocked-rferl-over-islamic-state-reporting/26883669.html

Preliminary results in the latest rigged parliamentary elections in Tajikistan show the ruling People’s Democratic Party of Tajikistan won another overwhelming victory.

But more importantly for the future, it was a defeat for the Islamic Renaissance Party of Tajikistan (IRPT) and the unofficial end of the power-sharing deal that was part of the Tajik Peace Accord of June 1997. And that raises questions about the future of Islam in politics not only in Tajikistan but in all the former Soviet republics that now make up Central Asia.

That Islam will play a role in the politics of Central Asia is undeniable, and the 1997 peace agreement in Tajikistan was an experiment that proved to some extent that Islam could have a political role in a secular state.

Under that agreement the United Tajik Opposition, an interesting mixture of the IRPT, and democratic and nationalist groups, received 30 percent of the positions in government at all levels, from local to ministerial.

The IRPT became and remains the only Islamic party registered in all of Central Asia.

The formation of such a government was a complicated and tense process, but it took root; and by the time the Taliban was chased from power in neighboring Afghanistan in late 2001, there were some who suggested the Tajik model of government might well suit Afghanistan.

For the Muslims of Tajikistan, and to some extent the rest of Central Asia, who were pious but interested in politics, it was a perceived opportunity for an Islamic point of view to find a legitimate place in governance.

The Muslims who fought with weapons in hand during the civil war were able to shift their efforts to battles in local and regional councils and parliament.

People such as Said Abdullo Nuri, the original IRPT leader, his deputy Hoja Akbar Turajonzoda, and the capable wartime field commander Mirzo Ziyoyev all found places in the government. And they were far more «radical» than the current IRPT leadership.

The idea never really caught on in neighboring Central Asian states. The current state of Uzbek-Tajik ties really dates back to the Tajik peace deal, since Uzbek President Islam Karimov was absolutely against the Tajik government allowing the IRPT to share power and furious when the peace agreement was signed.

But the Tajik government of former military adversaries, Islamic and secular, was able to work together and pull the country out of the catastrophic situation the country was in when the war ended. Tajikistan is not a rich country, it probably never will be, but it is stable and has been for more than a decade and a half.

That stability is now at risk — for no good reason, really. The IRPT had two of the 63 seats in parliament prior to the March 1 elections, nowhere near enough to influence the country’s politics, but at least the party was represented in parliament.

And having two seats preserved the IRPT’s hope that it could win more seats in future elections despite the many obstacles the party has faced and seem to suddenly face every time there are elections. Current IRPT leader Muhiddin Kabiri told me one week ago that he thought his party could win five seats in these latest elections.

The IRPT is the second-largest party in Tajikistan, so Kabiri’s prediction was plausible even knowing the deck might be stacked against him, so to speak.

Now the IRPT has no place in government; and for the roughly 44,000 registered members of the party and the many thousands more who support the IRPT, many under 30 years old, this is going to be a problem.

Analysts have warned for years that by driving the opposition, both secular and religious, underground, Central Asian governments were creating radicalized groups.

The lack of any voice whatsoever for the IRPT in government, after 18 years, is likely to come back to haunt the Tajik government one day.

— Bruce Pannier; Salimjon Aioubov and Tohir Safarov of RFE/RL’s Tajik contributed to this report

http://www.rferl.org/content/tajikistan-islam-elections-parliament-history/26883637.html

Two hundred labor migrants from Tajikistan have left their workplaces in Russia to go and fight alongside militants in Syria, Tajikistan’s Interior Minister, Ramazon Rakhimzoda has claimed. 

Rakhimzoda made his comments at a February meeting with young people in the Tajik capital Dushanbe, although information about the event was only published on March 3, RFE/RL’s Tajik service, Radio Ozodi, reported.

The Tajik Interior Minister blamed groups on the internet that «hunted» for «weak» youths in order to destabilize society.

«In order to achieve their goals, they finance young people and send them to unofficial Islamic schools abroad, and use other methods. As a result, over 200 wayward young people who found themselves as labor migrants in Russia, were sent to the fighting in Syria,» Rakhimzoda said.

It is not known how many Tajik nationals are fighting in Syria and Iraq. Official figures have put the number at 300. Edward Lemon from the UK’s University of Exeter, who tracks Tajik fighters in Syria, says there is online evidence of just 67 fighters, though there are likely to be more unreported Tajiks in Syria and Iraq.

While there is certainly evidence that young Tajik labor migrants in Russia are among those who have been radicalized and gone to fight in Syria, Rakhimzoda’s figure of 200 Tajiks who joined militant groups in the Middle East from Russia has not been quoted by any other analysts or government officials.

A recent study by researchers in Tajikistan’s Center for the Study of Modern Processes and Forecasting suggested that socioeconomic problems in the republic — Central Asia’s poorest — have indeed exacerbated the issue of radicalization.

The fact that Tajik labor migrants in Russia are offered only the very lowest paid, menial jobs leaves some of them open to being attracted by radical Islam, the study’s author Hafiz Boboerov found.

Boboerov recommended that the Tajik government try to address the root of the problem by tackling youth unemployment in Tajikistan, which would stem the tide of vulnerable youth labor migrants to Russia.

Rather than addressing the impact of Tajikistan’s socioeconomic problems on radicalization, including that of labor migrants, Rakhimzoda blamed «foreign intelligence services,» which he said had stepped in after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the weakening of the authorities in Tajikistan.

These foreign intelligence services — Rakhimzoda did not specify from which countries — were attracting «deceived youth» into  «extremist currents» like Hizb ut-Tahrir and militant groups like the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan and Jamaat Ansarullah, in order to «achieve their objectives,» Rakhimzoda said.

Rakhimzoda is not the first government official in a former Soviet republic to blame radicalization on outside forces, specifically on foreign intelligence services.

The head of the Chechen republic, Ramzan Kadyrov, accused the CIA and other Western intelligence agencies of deliberately targeting young Chechens in order to radicalize them and persuade them to fight alongside the Islamic State group in Syria.

Kadyrov has also accused the United States and its Western allies of using the Islamic State group to wage a «hidden war on Islam.»

— Joanna Paraszczuk

http://www.rferl.org/content/islamic-state-tajik-migrants-fighting-syria/26881804.html