The parents of five young Tajik men from the volatile Gorno-Badakhshan region told RFE/RL on June 23 that their sons did not arrive at the airport in the southern city of Kulob, where they were expected to arrive from Moscow on June 20 after Russian authorities deported them for unspecified reasons.
It remains unclear if the men were deported for violating Russia's migration regulations, or at the request of the Tajik authorities.
Relatives told RFE/RL that the men called their parents, who are from the community of Yazgulom, asking them to meet them at the Kulob airport on June 20. However, the men were not among the passengers who disembarked from the plane on that day.
The parents said they travelled 300 kilometers to reach Kulob to meet their sons after a Tajik official promised them by phone that they would be able to meet their sons at the airport.
Sources close to Tajik law enforcement have told RFE/RL that since May at least 15 residents of Yazgulom had been extradited from Russia to Tajikistan, where they were charged with "membership in an extremist organization" or "having links with members of an extremist organization."
There has been no official statement regarding the situation.
On May 16, Tajik security forces arrested more than 30 residents of Yazgulom, accusing them of plotting unspecified sabotage.
Sources told RFE/RL at the time that those arrested were suspected of having links with "extremist groups" in neighboring Afghanistan.
Residents of Gorno-Badakhshan have been under pressure for years. A crackdown on the restive Tajik region intensified in 2022 after mass protests in May that year were violently dispersed by security forces.
Tajik authorities said at the time that 10 people were killed and 27 injured during the clashes between protesters and police.
Residents of the remote region's Rushon district, however, have told RFE/RL that 21 bodies were found at the sites of the clashes.
Dozens of the region's residents have been jailed for lengthy terms on terrorism and extremism charges since then.
Deep tensions between the government and residents of the volatile region have simmered ever since a five-year civil war broke out shortly after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.
Still, protests are rare in the tightly controlled state of 9.5 million where President Emomali Rahmon has ruled with an iron fist for nearly three decades.