Why are Tajik authorities closing public organizations?

Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights defenders Mary Lawlor shared details of a letter that she and two of her colleagues sent to the authorities of Tajikistan regarding the liquidation of 700 civil society organizations in the country.

According to Radio Ozodi, the letter was sent to official Dushanbe on February 16, 2024, and according to correspondence rules, a response was expected within two months. In it, they urged Tajikistan to reconsider its attitude towards civil society and to make civil activists its allies rather than adversaries. They also requested the Tajik government to provide data on the number of civil society organizations in the country whose activities have been suspended over the past five years, and to report on measures taken to ensure the safe operation of human rights defenders in the country.

Ms. Lawlor wrote on social media platform “X” (formerly Twitter) on May 8 that since then, the activities of at least one more civil society organization in the country have been suspended. “We just received a response from the Tajik authorities, we will study it,” she wrote, without providing details contained in the response letter. In February 2023, the Minister of Justice of Tajikistan justified the suspension of several non-governmental organizations by financial problems.

In the letter from Mary Lawlor and her colleagues — Irene Khan (freedom of opinion and its free expression) and Clément Voule (freedom of peaceful assembly and association) to the authorities of Tajikistan, it was noted that “representatives of non-governmental organizations have repeatedly been invited to the Ministry of Justice and local authorities for discussions. Several leaders of non-governmental organizations confirmed that after such repeated ‘invitations,’ they decided to cease operations themselves.” “They were pressured to voluntarily wind down their work, otherwise inspections would begin and deficiencies would be identified,” the letter states.

According to UN representatives, some of these organizations had more than 20 years of experience, and now, with their liquidation, areas such as the protection of the right to education, protection of torture victims, prevention of domestic violence, ensuring access to land and housing, and assistance to people with disabilities are in dire straits.

Mary Lawlor notes that the authorities of Tajikistan closed several civil society organizations following protests in the Gorno-Badakhshan Autonomous Region in 2022. In the spring of 2022, protests took place in Khorog and Rushan, followed by a security operation. As a result, according to official information, 29 people were killed. An investigation by Radio Ozodi revealed that at least 34 people died in those events, and dozens more were detained and later sentenced to long terms.

In a letter from the UN Special Rapporteur, it was noted that after this incident in 2022, about 200 non-governmental organizations were closed by court decision, including more than 20 organizations by the decision of the Economic Court of GBAO in the absence of their leaders. Overall, until 2022, there were about 300 public organizations operating in GBAO, but currently only about ten percent of that number remains. Earlier, representatives of five public organizations in GBAO told Radio Ozodi in an interview that security forces forced them to announce their liquidation.

The Minister of Justice of Tajikistan, Muzaffar Ashuriyon, stated in February 2023 that most of these organizations self-liquidated due to financial problems. The US State Department in April of this year noted that the reasons for the liquidation of NGOs were not only issues with tax payments and reporting on funding sources but also threats from security agencies.

According to the UN Special Rapporteur, the leaders of some public organizations in Tajikistan were intimidated by the initiation of criminal cases for extremism, while others were forced to close due to interference from tax officials.

In December 2023, the head of the European delegation in Tajikistan, Raimundas Karoblis, expressed concern over the suspension of activities of hundreds of non-governmental organizations in the country over the past year. According to him, “the cessation of activities of 700 public organizations in Tajikistan is not conducive to the democratization of society.”

According to Akhad Sodikov, a representative of the Office of the Commissioner for Human Rights in Tajikistan, “no organization in Tajikistan has been forcibly closed” or as a result of any legal measures. “Many of them closed due to lack of funds. They mainly operate on project funding, and as soon as the projects end, so does their activity. The reasons vary, but no public organization in Tajikistan has been closed forcibly,” he emphasized.

According to the Ministry of Justice of Tajikistan, only in the last 4.5 years, a total of 715 organizations have been registered in Tajikistan, while 1103 have ceased their activities. In 2022, nearly 500 organizations were closed, and the activities of more than 100 NGOs were terminated by court decision. As of today, just under 2,000 public organizations are officially operating in Tajikistan.