Athlete not allowed to speak in Pamiri language

The prison administration did not allow Chorshanbe Chorshanbiyev to speak with relatives in the Pamiri language.

Photo: Internet

Famous Tajik journalist Rustami Joni, citing his sources in the colony in Dushanbe, reported that the colony administration demanded that the well-known prisoner athlete Chorshanbe Chorshanbiyev speak with his relatives not in the Pamiri language, but in Tajik or Russian.

Chorshanbiyev objected to the colony administration’s demand and said: “You have done everything you wanted to me. Now you want to deprive me of my native language? These are my relatives, and I want to speak with them in Pamiri, in my native language.”

After the athlete’s protest, the guards interrupted Chorshanbiyev’s meeting with his relatives and took him away with them. There have been no new reports about him. In most cases, the colony administration punishes prisoners who make demands or protest against the guards’ decisions.

Chorshanbe Chorshanbiyev was deported from Russia on December 31, 2021, and detained in Dushanbe. In May of last year, a court sentenced him to 8.5 years in prison on charges of publicly calling for the violent change of the constitutional order of the Republic of Tajikistan. However, he and his relatives rejected these charges.

Chorshanbe was serving his sentence in a colony in Khujand, but in October of last year, he was transferred to a so-called “closed” prison in Dushanbe.