As far as we are informed, from March 21 to March 29, 2023, there was scheduled a series of Emomali Rahmon’s informal working visits to the United Europe and the United States. These countries openly declare democracy as their basic value. So Rahmon’s visits to Germany, the USA and Great Britain, will be received against the background of the Rahmon regime’s unprecedented crimes against humanity in Badakhshan, when the graves of dozens of peaceful demonstrators who were shot and tortured in the massacres are still fresh in Vamar and Khorog.

During the very hours and minutes that Rahmon will be welcomed in those democratic countries hundreds of dissidents will still be tortured in his prisons in Tajikistan. However, Rahmon interprets this voyage as evidence of the international support for his rule.

We are just as well alarmed that Tajik dissidents are increasingly denied political asylum in Europe. They are threatened with deportation to Tajikistan, despite the fact that Tajikistan is one of the ten most unfree and repressive countries, where torture is the basic principle and the regular tool for obtaining evidence used by judicial authorities. Under these conditions, the deportation of an asylum seeker is tantamount to extradition and solidarity with the dictatorial regime.

In fact our compatriot Hizbullo Shovalizoda was deported on March 5, 2020 from Austria to Tajikistan. Under torture he self-incriminated himself and was sentenced in a closed session to 20 years in prison.

On January 18, 2023, Abdullokhi Shamsiddin was deported from Germany to Tajikistan. He is the son of one of the leaders of Tajik opposition forces coalition(NAT). He was transferred to the hands of the Tajikistan KGB. Ever since he has been deprived of all rights and is kept in complete isolation in the basements of the KGB building as hostage and is subjected to moral and physical torture. The extradition of asylum seekers by democratic countries to Rahmon’s dictatorial regime undermines the refugees’ sense of security and makes them feel that even in Europe they are being held hostage by the regime.

The National Alliance of Tajikistan expresses serious concern in this regard and calls on the civilized world, international human rights organizations, free media, governments of European countries, primarily Germany, to demand from Emomali Rahmon immediate release of the kidnapped Abdullohi Shamsiddin and his return to his family in Europe.

We call on the free world to abstain from the legitimization of authoritarian regimes, avoid helping them to carry out repressions against dissidents and thereby not to encourage them to commit new crimes against the rights and freedoms of citizens and against humanity itself.

15.03.2023