Turkey- Lawyers accuse Tajikistan of violating human rights

(MENAFN- The Journal Of Turkish Weekly) Tajikistan's violation of human rights has been strongly criticized in a lawyers' report released Monday.

"The Tajik government should immediately stop all the oppression over its people" reads the document prepared by a group of Turkish lawyers.

‘Violation Report of Tajikistan’ discusses rights violations in the country's judicial system as well as individuals' right to freedom of religion.

The lawyers who prepared the report include Turkish nationals Gulden Sonmez and Emine Yildirim along with Russian lawyer Dagir Khasavov who were all detained in Dushanbe the capital of Tajikistan on Jan. 22.

Their detention followed their meeting with relatives and lawyers of certain prisoners.

On Jan. 21 five lawyers had left Turkey for Tajikistan -- excluding Khasavov who travelled from Russia -- to show solidarity with lawyers from the Islamic Renaissance Party of Tajikistan (IRPT) who had been arrested “by the Tajik government” the advocates said.

They said formal letters had previously been sent to the authorities including the Turkish embassy and the Prosecutor's Office in Dushanbe informing them of the lawyers' visit.

Two female lawyers Sonmez and Yildirim as well as Khasavov and their interpreter Zaur Beg an Azerbaijani national were allowed into the country while the three remaining lawyers were declined.

One of them is Omer Faruk Yildirim who has slammed government violations of freedom of religion. A number of mosques and other religious buildings in the country are either closed or destroyed he claimed.

"Tajik Muslim women are prevented from wearing headscarves and teenagers are not allowed to go and pray in the mosques" he read out from the report.

"Students at religious schools are accused of being terrorists" he also said adding: "It is even forbidden to import Islamic dresses for women."

His colleague Cavit Tatli pointed to what he called attacks and arrests on members of the IRPT -- the only legal Islamic party in Central Asia until 2015 when it was shut down the report reads.

"In March 2015 parliamentary elections over half of the party members were prevented from running for the elections on the pretext that 'they failed in the obligatory Tajik language test'" it adds.

The report covers a list of "unlawful detentions" and says over 100 individuals including politicians lawyers and authors are still being kept in prisons.

"I left Tajikistan because of the oppression on our party members" Bobojon Kayumov told Anadolu Agency. He served as one of the board members of the IRPT but came to Turkey after March elections.

"I went to Kyrgyzstan first but as it has good relations with Tajikistan we had problems there as well" he said. "Turkey is a home for the suffering people."

Concerns over violations of human rights and freedoms in Tajikistan are not new.

In a 2015 report NGO Freedom House said: "Court proceedings rarely follow the rule of law and nearly all defendants are found guilty. Police frequently make arbitrary arrests and beat detainees to extract confessions."

Following repeated cases of independent attorneys being imprisoned over the past few years lawyers in the country began voicing concerns over illegal imprisonment issues.

Today’s lawyers' report calls on the international and Islamic communities to "announce to the world the unlawful detentions and practices of Tajikistan" and to "make efforts to stop the violations in the country".

"If you [the Tajik government] really do not torture those in the prisons and keep them in humanitarian conditions then let the international human watchdogs to observe them in the detention centers" said Sonmez -- one of the detained lawyers.

By Humeyra Atilgan Buyukovali