Watchdog

DUSHANBE -- A Tajik activist from the Central Asian nation's restive Gorno-Badakhshan Region (GBAO) has reportedly been arrested in Moscow and may be extradited to Tajikistan, where his relatives say he faces illegal incarceration and arbitrary prosecution.

Relatives of Mamadbek Atobekov told RFE/RL on September 2 that the activist was detained in Moscow a day earlier, adding that two Tajik police officers were among the Russian law enforcement officers who took him into custody.

It is not known where Atobekov is being kept as Moscow police have not commented on his arrest.

According to the relatives, another GBAO native, Mansur Dildorbekov, was arrested along with Atobekov but released an hour later.

Two weeks earlier, another GBAO native, noted blogger Maqsud Ghayosov, was arrested in Moscow and has been held incommunicado since.

The Pamir Daily News website that monitors developments in the GBAO says at least 20 of the region's natives have been detained in Moscow and forcibly brought to Tajikistan in the last six months.

Relatives and rights defenders say that the arrests in Moscow were most likely linked mass protests in the GBAO that were violently dispersed by the authorities in May.

Deep tensions between the Tajik government and residents of the volatile GBAO have simmered since a five-year civil war broke out shortly after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.

Protests are rare in tightly controlled Tajikistan, where President Emomali Rahmon has ruled with an iron fist for nearly three decades.

The latest crackdown on activists in the GBAO followed protests initially sparked by anger over the lack of an investigation into the 2021 death of an activist while in police custody and the refusal by regional authorities to consider the resignation of regional Governor Alisher Mirzonabot and Khorugh Mayor Rizo Nazarzoda.

The rallies intensified after one of the protesters, 29-year-old Zamir Nazrishoev, was killed by police on May 16, prompting the authorities to launch what they called a "counterterrorist operation."

The escalating violence in the region has sparked a call for restraint from UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, Western diplomatic missions in Tajikistan, and human rights groups.

Also, on September 2, sources close to law enforcement structures told RFE/RL that a Tajik activist, Emomali Kholov, who was arrested in Russia and extradited to Tajikistan in June, is suspected of having links with banned opposition Group 24 movement and may face up to eight years in prison if convicted.

Group 24 was labeled as extremist and banned in 2014. In March 2015, the movement's founder, businessman and politician Umarali Quvatov, was assassinated in Istanbul.

Russian investigators have confiscated the passport of a former columnist at RFE/RL's Idel.Realities online project that covers news and developments in Russia's Volga and Urals area, a move that has blocked her from traveling to Israel to receive cancer treatment.

Marina Yudkevich wrote on Facebook on September 1 that after police searched her home on August 17, she and six other journalists whose homes were also searched that day in Tatarstan's capital, Kazan, were officially designated as witnesses in an extremism case related to an online post about Russia's ongoing invasion of Ukraine.

Yudkevich wrote that the journalists, including herself, were ordered not to leave Kazan and investigators confiscated her passport, computers, mobile phones, and other electronic devices.

"I see two variants for my future: either I am burdened with cancer in a detention center and later in a penal colony, or, if I am be a bit optimistic, I am allowed to die at home," Yudkevich wrote, adding that investigators will most likely change her witness status to that of a suspect.

Yudkevich also wrote that she had an appointment at a clinic in Jerusalem on August 24 that she was forced to skip as she was unable to travel abroad without her passport, which investigators refused to return.

The Setevyye Svobody group, which monitors the rights of online journalists, said in a statement on September 1 that it helped Yudkevich file an appeal against the home search and confiscation of her passport with Tatarstan's Prosecutor-General's Office.

RFE/RL President and CEO Jamie Fly has condemned the searches of the journalists' homes.

President Vladimir Putin in March signed a law that calls for lengthy prison terms for distributing "deliberately false information" about Russian military operations as the Kremlin seeks to control the narrative about its war in Ukraine.

The law envisages sentences of up to 10 years in prison for individuals convicted of an offense, while the penalty for the distribution of "deliberately false information" about the Russian Army that leads to "serious consequences" is 15 years in prison.

It also makes it illegal "to make calls against the use of Russian troops to protect the interests of Russia" or "for discrediting such use" with a possible penalty of up to three years in prison. The same provision applies to calls for sanctions against Russia.