Activist Slams Tajikistan for Preventing Her from Reuniting with Daughter
TEHRAN (Tasnim) – An independent activist from Tajikistan slammed the Dushanbe government for the travel ban on her family on political grounds and said she has been prevented from seeing her 10-year-old daughter since 2014.
Speaking to the Tasnim News Agency, Shabnam Khudoydodova said the Tajik authorities do not let her mother and daughter leave the country to reunite with her in Europe.
She said the Tajik government has provided no reasonable explanation for the travel ban on her family.
The activist went on to say that during the past four years, she has also had problems in contacting with her mother and daughter.
Khudoydodova also pointed to her mother’s illness and said since 2014, a lot of pressures have been inflicted on her mother by the Tajik authorities.
She added that in 2016, after her speech in Poland, demonstrations were held for 10 days near her mother's home, “which were obviously organized by the government.”
The activist went on to say that at the time, the pressure and stress caused by the demonstrations worsened her mother’s blood pressure problem.
According to media reports, human rights groups have called on the Tajik government to lift a "politically motivated travel ban" on Khudoydodova’s family, and put an end to its "vicious campaign of intimidation" against dissidents' relatives.
Seven watchdogs, including Human Rights Watch (HRW), said on August 7 that security services had forced Khudoydodova’s 10-year-old daughter, elderly mother, and brother off an airplane at Tajikistan's main airport a few days eralier.
They were on their way to Europe to reunite with the activist, the groups said.
"The cruelty Tajik authorities have shown against this 10-year-old girl and her relatives simply for her mother’s peaceful criticism of the government is shocking," Hugh Williamson, Europe and Central Asia director at HRW said in a statement. "They should be allowed to leave Tajikistan immediately without any fear of retribution."
The statement said Tajik security service officers on August 4 boarded the plane on which Khudoydodova’s family members were waiting to depart, removed them from the flight, and banned them from traveling to Europe to reunite with the activist.
The three were interrogated for hours and forced to sign documents acknowledging that all of them, including the girl, were on a "wanted list," it added.
The move is the latest in a series of actions against Khudoydodova’s family that included violent attacks against her daughter and other relatives, the groups said.
They added that Tajik authorities have regularly detained, threatened, and banned from travel family members of other opposition activists abroad.
Khudoydodova, an activist from the Tajik political movement Group 24, was detained in Belarus for more than eight months in 2015 and 2016 under a Tajik extradition request and Interpol warrant.
After that, she stopped her political opposition work and took up human rights activism in Poland on behalf of Tajik asylum seekers there, the seven rights groups said in their joint statement.
Group 24 was officially banned in Tajikistan in October 2014 after authorities labeled it as an extremist organization.
