Earlier this month, Tajikistan's government again excluded Leninabad, the country's northern province, from that country's post-civil war political settlement.According to a Human Rights Watch reportPolitical Prisoners in Tajikistan the government waged this campaign by cracking down on the region's political parties, arresting and harassing its activists or suspected activists, and censoring from the media most information about Leninabad-based political movements.
According to a Human Rights Watch report, issued today, the government waged this campaign by cracking down on the region's political parties, arresting and harassing its activists or suspected activists, and censoring from the media most information about Leninabad-based political movements.
Holly Carter, Executive Director of Human Rights Watch's Europe and Central Asia division commented, "By excluding the Leninabadi political movement the government of Tajikistan_a country riven with interregional rivalries_ threatens the peace accord it concluded with the United Tajik Opposition." The peace agreement, reached in June 1997, ended Tajikistan's five-year civil war.
In pre-civil war Tajikistan the Leninabadi communist nomenklatura directed the nation's politics, helping to foster the interregional rivalries that served as a driving force behind the war. Since the war, however, this region, home to more than 30 percent of the population, has been gradually marginalized from politics. In May 1996 thousands of Leninabadis demonstrated against this state of affairs. The Human Rights Watch report documents the consequences that protest organizers and participants suffered in the year that followed, especially in the wake of an April 1997 assassination attempt against President Emomali Rakhmonov. According to the Human Rights Watch report, those Leninabadis arrested following demonstrations and the assassination attempt were brutally beaten; some were arrested due exclusively to their perceived affiliation with the NRM. Tajik police massacred more than one hundred prisoners in its attempts to put down a prison riot in Khujand (the capital of Leninabad) in April 1997; journalists and newspapers that try to report on Leninabadi political movements and the prison uprising have faced arrests, government threats and other forms of harassment.
The NRM has since 1996 sought a prominent role in the peace negotiations. Following the government's April decision to exclude the NRM, the Commission for National Reconciliation, the transitional body charged with overseeing the implementation of the peace accord, acknowledged that the persecution of political activists _including, presumably, NRM members_ must cease. "Human Rights Watch welcomes the peace process in Tajikistan and, while not supporting a particular political party or movement, encourages an inclusive as opposed to exclusive, peace process," declared Ms. Cartner.
Among the recommendations in the thirty-two-page report:
Human Rights Watch calls on the government of Tajikistan to facilitate a thorough, independent investigation of the April 1997 Khujand prison massacre, with complete cooperation of prison and medical authorities, and make public the findings of the investigation.
Human Rights Watch calls on the government of Tajikistan to respect its obligations under international law regarding freedom of expression, and cease all forms of intimidation or harassment of the press.
Human Rights Watch urges the United Nations to deploy as quickly as possible human rights experts to Tajikistan and establish a human rights monitoring, reporting and analysis unit.
Human Rights Watch urges the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) to open a full-time office in Khujand, actively monitor political and human rights developments in Leninabad oblast, and raise individual cases of human rights violations with their interlocutors in the Tajikistan government.
