Well, thank you all for joining us for this online seminar on the deteriorating human rights situation in Pakistan.
It really is a pleasure to have our three speakers and I'll introduce them briefly.
There is Dr. Steve Swerdlow, who is a human rights lawyer and assistant professor for the practise of human rights
in the Department of Political Science at the University of Southern California.
We have Neil Clark, who is head of legal programmes and advocacy at the Minority Rights Group International.
And we have seen that Sultan Aliyev, who is Central Asia, researcher for Human Rights Watch and works mostly on Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan.
And this is, I think, the third of our seminars on Central Asia, specifically Tajikistan,
hosted by the Asian Studies Centre at St Anthony's College and the University of Oxford.
So let me begin then by asking you, Steve, to perhaps say a few words about your impressions of.
Recent events in Tajikistan, specifically in the region of the autonomous allegedly autonomous region of Badakhshan.
And it's such an honour to be here today.
Feisal, thank you for organising this. Thank you to Oxford.
And it's really exciting to be with Synod for the first time on a panel together and with Neil,
who I've been I've been following both of what they've been saying about this abysmal and worsening situation in Badakhshan.
And I would just start by saying, what are my impressions? Well, you know, you add this current crisis to an already atrocious picture in Tajikistan,
and what you see is a situation crying out for international attention,
which sadly and unsurprisingly, it has not been receiving and not getting it under.
Fortunately, that's that's nothing new for Tajikistan. Tajikistan has always occupied this place, or at least for the last 12 years,
has occupied this place of being one of the most repressive human rights situations in the world.
And now, unfortunately, I would say in the last six, seven or longer years,
it's become also one of the most closed spaces in terms of freedom of expression, Internet blockade, censorship.
And because it is occupying this peripheral position in Eurasia and is often not covered in the media,
very much, almost as little as Turkmenistan gets, it gets forgotten.
And as we know, those of us that follow Central Asia, did you extend as many ways an outlier?
It's the one Farsi non Turkic. Speaking of the five countries, it's the poorest of the five Central Asian countries.
It's the country most dependent on remittances. It's there's so many ways in which Tajikistan gets pushed aside, gets forgotten about.
And this current human rights crisis in the region, as you said, allegedly autonomous is is is scary.
It's frightening. We're talking about, again, no new instruments.
And I may be able to correct me on the current casualty figures, but upwards of 50 or more casualties killed in this period between May and late June.
We see the systematic crackdown on journalists such as Mama Choi.
But today, as we record this and have this conversation, I'm learning that the relatives of a leading journalist named Nora Sakharov,
who have known for some time now and used to be based in Tajikistan, like many,
had to flee because it became impossible for her to work as a journalist.
She now lives in the Czech Republic, but her relatives have been detained because of her of her telegram channel,
which has been informing us very expeditiously and importantly on what's happening there.
She's one of the people that really knows what the primary situation is like.
And for doing so, the Tajik authorities have recalled yet another very well-known tactic that we've been talking about for some time now.
And you, Feisal, have probably held discussions on this.
But transnational repression, this is where the Tajik of excuse me, the Tajik authorities, they punch above their relatively modest weight.
It's a small country. It's not the Russian security services. So what they do is they get creative.
They decide to intimidate the relatives of those who have fled abroad, hold them in a way, hostage and frighten and terrorism.
And so we've seen now, yet again, this happening in the case of a premiere journalist are north of the border.
And we're very worried, I think the whole human rights community about the condition of the journalists,
whoever, of course, as my colleagues in the not, I'm sure we'll get to this.
There's been already calls for the need for an independent investigation into the deaths, into the violence, an end to the Internet blockade.
So there's a lot one can say. But I think what what what I would maybe start our discussion off by and having started
my fieldwork in Tajikistan around the time of the 2012 military operations in Ghana,
Badakhshan, I think that the international community's inertia, its relative lack of interest, its inaction, its unwillingness.
To listen to primary civil society and Tajik civil society in general after the 2012 events.
What that did was it facilitated a widening a widening of the repression in the crackdown on human rights generally in Tajikistan.
2012, in a way as sort of a watershed.
2014 is when you get the first high profile arrest of someone who was just talking about contending in the presidential elections.
Of that time, they decided he was promptly arrested.
And that comes just before the killing of another activist in Istanbul who tried to start another group called Group 24.
Sounds familiar for those of us who are now following Group 44, a group of Palmyra activists.
So you had 2014, 2015, this assassination in Istanbul of a political figure.
Then later that year, the Islamic Renaissance Party, Tajikistan, shuttered band, its members arrested,
its party destroyed hundreds of people fleeing the country and now hundreds of political prisoners to this day.
And on and on and on. And we come back now in 2022 with this abysmal situation.
So in a way, there's a cycle of horrors that begins with corn production, may ends.
I don't know if that's the proper place to to to start. Tajikistan's atrocious story of human rights.
But it does seem appropriate given what's happening. And so maybe I'll just close out with that, that very depressing introduction.
Thanks very much, Steve. You know, you started out by saying that correctly, of course,
that most of Central Asia and certainly Tajikistan rarely gets into the front pages of newspapers abroad,
not even Russia aware, you know, much of its diaspora lives and on whose remittances the country depends.
So you would think Russia has great leverage in Tajikistan,
which clearly they don't want to exercise in any way or perhaps exercise only in support of the government there.
But on the other hand, of course, it's a country that borders Afghanistan, so its automatically important for security reasons to the West.
And yet I agree, you see almost no attention being given it.
And I wondered, turning to his sympathy not to whether, you know, Steve mentioned ulfa condemn who is a,
you know, a prominent figure and surely someone like her would make.
A good convincing a prisoner of conscience or something, you know.
Do you think that. Human Rights Watch and other human rights institutions who work in these regions would be willing to,
as it were, publicise the fate of these figures, who,
after all, are precisely the kinds of figures we should look to when thinking about civil
society and democracy and human rights and security for ordinary people.
Thank you, Feisal. That's a really good question. And also thanks for inviting me to participate in this segment.
And I completely agree with you that we would definitely make a very convincing prisoner of conscience in Tajikistan
in relation to the May protests and general sort of crackdown on the minority in the autonomous oblast or region.
The reasons of which, I mean, it's a it's a whole other discussion.
So I won't really go in there. I just wanted to before going there, going into the column, I was I wanted to make a note that,
interestingly enough, you also mentioned this in your in the lead up to this question,
that the Jew question does have some geopolitical importance to the wider world in relation to its shared border with Afghanistan.
And last year, we last autumn, we saw increased attention.
Now, President Obama was invited several times to Europe, to Brussels,
meeting with the president of the EU, meeting with the French president and whatnot.
So there has been this kind of a brief flash of attention on the extent, but it hasn't really translated into anything since then,
which I'm guessing that once the European leaders or we'll see some kind of guarantees,
then everything else is kind of yes, your your your your business.
We're not interfering with it. And that's very disappointing from an from an activist point of view as a human rights defender as well.
And interestingly enough,
President Macron was also the only president in the region who had who seemed to have taken this very oppositional stance to the Taliban,
to the rise of the Taliban in Afghanistan last year. And yet now it's specifically in relation to the main protest we are seeing.
I mean, we're getting reports that the president I you know,
that the government in general is willing to enter agreements and negotiations with the Taliban,
you know,
just making sure that they wouldn't be offering shelter to anybody who fleeing from the so-called anti-extremist special operation in with a chance.
So these are all just just things for people to keep in mind and to for regular listeners or activist
listeners of our discussion to really bring up with their governments if they have a chance to do it.
And as for what will come upon them and genocides like this, crackdown on the freedom of expression, yes, it has been going on for such a long time.
I think the jigsaw, as Steve already mentioned, it's been a problem for for years and years.
But right now we are seeing that sort of on the back of the May protests.
And also even let's go back to November reports, especially a higher number of journalists and independent bloggers or just people
who are posting their opinions on Facebook or knowing other social media.
They're getting arrested. They're getting invited to talks with the you know, the police in general.
And it is extremely worrying concerning the journalists.
You know, established journalists, like like like my brother is getting arrested.
And also this I can call it, other than a show of a tape of this confession tape that she was where she's,
you know, basically admitting that she was involved in the May policy of organising these things.
And that was I mean, it is very much clear, you know,
under which circumstances for these confessions received from her when everybody knows that she's going
to end up in detention soon since the end of May basically and and again our research organisations
research more as watch this in the country just indicates that use of torture in places of detention is a
routine thing is it's a regular tool in the toolbox of the police to get whatever confessions to mean.
So this is just absolutely, you know, nobody can trust this this data and.
Other thing with regards to information, access to information or freedom of expression,
just general in relation to the main events is yes, there has been the Internet shutdown, it's been going practise in the November events.
It's been sort of restored in mid-March, only to be shut down again in the beginning of May and still have not been restored.
And from sort of just to add this little human, ordinary human perspective, that is that people in the whole of the region,
which is which takes up about 44% of the whole territory, some have no access to communications.
Their relatives are they cannot get through to them. Obviously, there is a problem with some ways of contacting, perhaps, you know,
going to the border and negotiating with the Taliban guards or something, border patrol to get a message out.
But that's probably a super limited way for people to get their messages out out of the region since this is a complete shutdown.
And I can imagine that if you are a migrant again in Russia or you you're on a decision in Europe or elsewhere,
and, you know what kind of events are happening? You know that more than 40 people have been killed.
And there are allegations of these extra judicial killings in villages of Russian and mammoths.
And you are unable to get information by the relatives for speaking there.
That's that is another level of psychological abuse, torture of citizens by the authorities.
And that's that's extremely concerning, I think. No, thanks very much.
I mean, I you know, what you were saying about the the apparently shifting Tajik government policy towards Afghanistan is really fascinating because,
you know, I wonder if one might speculate that in some ways they are playing both sides.
You know, on the one hand, of course, is Russia a traditional protector and defender, which is happy to return people and to extradite people,
including sort of famous, you know, mixed martial arts champions and things like that to to Tajikistan.
On the other hand, the situation with Afghanistan seems to suggest that.
So Rahman is playing with Western countries as well, that there's a kind of a relative openness to considering the security issues that.
Are of concern to Western countries and therefore, you know, initially support the anti-Taliban forces,
as you were saying, you know, almost ostentatiously so during the withdrawal from Afghanistan.
And yet, on the other hand, you know, turning towards the Taliban and I guess Gabo is caught in the middle, isn't it?
Because it is the part of the country bordering Afghanistan.
And for so many years now,
the Dushanbe government has accused people in Badakhshan of somehow being part of a Taliban inspired militant Islamic movement.
And yet they can very easily turn around and, you know, try to make friends with the Taliban while.
Then doing what with these guys? I mean, what I find fascinating here is and turning to you, Neal,
is picking up from what Zainab was saying that including what you said and not about these short trials or confessions,
which on the one hand seem so old fashioned. You know, they go back to the Cold War.
On the other, you know, and to the degree that no one can possibly believe them.
But that perhaps isn't the point. They're not meant to be believable.
But you know what? How is it possible for Nielsen to work with you?
Advocacy for governments in Europe, for instance, to take all of this seriously, or do they take it seriously?
How can it not impinge on their policies? Or are they willing simply to, as seen that was suggesting,
to turn to turn a blind eye to what's happening in Tajikistan as long as the Tajik
government cooperates with them on security issues having to do with with Afghanistan.
I mean, the there's an endless way of answers to the kind of geopolitical interests in people, you know.
I mean, Margie was one of the few organisations physically engaged by this region and everyone you speak to
on the ground that has a different perspective on the interest of different countries and actors.
You know, every building, every road being created, the people see a purpose in that.
You can see physically the signs of every international development agency scattered around the region.
And what I would say, I still feel there is a degree when dealing with those international organisations like the EU,
the U.N. or countries with our traditional record of speaking out on human rights.
And they still tend to frame the situation in key, out in the language of the government, even if they don't trust the government.
So we still see them talking about tensions and conflicts which roots in kind of the historical incidents which Steve has has referred to.
And one of the things that we are trying to convey to them or try to get them to repeat it in always publicly, is that,
you know, we're not speaking in a specific period from November onwards, which I think needs to be seen in a broader context.
But if we do look at the incidents from November,
you see a cycle where there are civil protests or civil actions in relation to specific human rights violations,
which do not relate to anti-terror actions or do not relate to actions against criminal enterprises or Afghanistan or Kyrgyzstan or China.
You know, they relate to improving the governance. They relate to the arrests, detentions.
The civil rights protests are followed by violence by authorities, which are then followed by further shutdowns,
whether that be closing of the Internet or whether it be arrest and detentions of prominent civil society actors.
In many cases, these are people whose primary mandate is preservation of cultural identity.
They're not political spokesmen, you know. So these are the arrests of that.
And it repeats itself in a cycle. And what?
International bodies and what international governments who may be allies on this need to start saying and I
recognising is that this is about human rights violations and it's about violations which are targeting an ethnic,
linguistic and indigenous populations in the region. The motives for that might be more rooted in geopolitical concerns,
but if I give an example, you know, so we talked a lot about the situation in Afghanistan.
What is the impact of the return of the Taliban on the human rights, the socio economic development, the culture of communities in general?
So if remember, we're talking about us as a region which also historically covers Pakistan and Afghanistan across the border.
And for those of you who haven't seen it, if you look at a map of the about,
it actually has a very narrow road entry into Tajikistan along the borders of Afghanistan, China and Kyrgyzstan.
All these borders are closed.
The Kyrgyzstan board is closed because the capital of the Kurdistan, the China border is closed because of the situation,
because the Afghanistan border is now closed because of the return of the Taliban.
In recent years, in the brief period in which the Taliban were not in power in Afghanistan,
there was an opening of those borders which allowed a cultural exchange and revival amongst primary people.
It also actually gave them very basically a much more physically convenient market for communities from get out for their goods and services.
So it was very important terms of developed the economy and revival of culture, particularly in a region where as as we say,
there's been large migrations out due to economic, social and political pressure.
So we talk about the geopolitical issues, what the situation in Afghanistan, but that is a consequence for the communities.
You know, it returns that pressure onto them. So along side what we think is very important,
alongside acknowledging the human rights dimension to this and the specific consequence
and targeting of this population because of its ethnicity or its language or religion,
indigeneity, but also for international, it is to recognise the development aspect of this.
So when they're looking at how they negotiate, you know, the engagement with the Taliban,
the role of education in this for the communities, this is significant in terms of culture and development.
And if the EU wants to have a shot at tight, close border isolating the Taliban, there is a cost for the population of the Tamils.
And as an international act, if this is what they're advocating, they have to address that and take responsibility for that.
Thanks, Neal. I mean, I think the you know, the development, which is what you ended your comments with, is absolutely crucial, obviously.
And you're right, of course, this is a region which, on the one hand,
is meant to be or touted as being extraordinarily remote and impossible and difficult to get to.
And yet when you go to its main towns, they are full of those white into your week clothes and SUV's and,
you know, signs everywhere and projects and all the rest. So there's something quite paradoxical about that.
On the other hand, of course, you know, NGOs are perhaps even more so than European and other states constrained.
You know, the more they work there,
the quieter they have to be in terms of their political opinions and views that they allow even amongst their own employees on,
you know, because they might just as well be expelled.
And the academy and of course, is in a way the best example of this now.
And no one can doubt its commitment to improving the lives of trees and others in Tajikistan, but particularly Pamir,
is because of the link of the HRT and with the religious leadership of the Ismaili community.
On the other hand, they have remained deathly silent as far as they know, and it's entirely understandable.
And I suppose one must imagine that the behind the scenes negotiations and all kinds of things are happening, but I certainly see no sign of them.
Do you think they are painted in to this impossible situation where there is nothing to do?
Are they are they constantly being pushed to accommodate with the government and that this would be an open question to all of you, actually.
And it doesn't need to be only the academia. You can think of it himself.
We can think of, you know, various U.N., those, of course, international organisations that are connected to governments.
But even if you were just thinking of the non-governmental ones, maybe I'll try a little bit to try to address a few things.
You'll touch a little bit on the EU.
And so I think also I'll try as the American here to to criticise the U.S. approach a bit, but starting with NGOs.
Just thinking back to my time covering Tajikistan when I was with an NGO and and going there, of course, it's absolutely true.
I just want to confirm what you're saying that myself, but much more importantly, local colleagues,
we're always virtually always put at risk for meeting with organisations like Human Rights Watch.
There was an incident maybe five years ago, if I'm remembering correctly or more,
in which your colleague from Amnesty International was was detained during a very brief mission and questioned and these sorts of incidents and also,
of course, the systematic denial of registration to groups like Freedom House and others that for a good period of time invested many,
many resources in trying to open offices in Tajikistan. That's always been a feature of the environment.
And yet there are no expert on equity in Akkadian like you.
But I of course, that question for those of us that care about human rights and Tajikistan's always pained me or irritated me or asked the question,
is it really understandable that they don't take a position on something as egregious and atrocious?
Now we're talking about, as Neil very properly added, more context to this.
I mean, people using words like annihilation.
Of course, in the community, we're hearing the the word of genocide, obviously not legally defined necessarily that way.
But I think given the severity of the situation, I'm shocked to not hear more voices, including Acton.
But let me put the blame where I think it should be first and foremost, which is that you talked about this silence, you know, on the part of academe.
But I'm thinking back to maybe a month ago when or less when Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asia, Donald Lu,
was visiting Dushanbe and probably everyone saw this that day that he tweeted a tweet comes out from the account of the State
Department that amongst other things today that we're so happy to be here addressing and discussing is human rights are on the agenda.
And it was tone deaf and it was it really brought me back again to this earlier period of the way in which the US
government often instrumentalized the relationship with Tajikistan through the so-called Northern Distribution Network,
using rail links and transportation lines to supply troops in Afghanistan with material.
And it just reminded me so much of that period in which human rights concerns were tamped down more that briefly changed concerning Tajikistan,
oddly enough, because of something else that Neal briefly mentioned, which was wiggers.
There was a time when in which Secretary of State Pompeo placed a premium on punishing those countries that may be cooperating with the Chinese.
And we saw extraditions and the tensions that you could still have amongst them.
That moment has certainly passed. And as both as all of you have said,
Rahmon achieved a sort of rehabilitation in the eyes of the international community in terms of his stance on Afghanistan, as senator said.
And he certainly bought himself a little bit more political capital. So maybe all these factors are playing into this.
But I think the unfortunate, shortsighted aspect of that is that when it ultimately does, is it further destabilises Tajikistan?
It makes this powderkeg situation even more explosive.
And I think what's scary about the bout so much is that we don't see we don't have as much imagery,
we don't have as much access to the horrors, to all the problems that have been committed.
And so it's hard truly in this, you know, in this period where we're able to document war crimes in Ukraine from morning until night.
Gordon. But the Chinese were standing completely out outside of that.
And it's it's a rare situation in a way where there's less visual imagery and less access.
And that's why the intimidation of a Nora's relatives today was so important for the Tajik authorities to carry out.
So we need to find a solution to that. But first and foremost, we need to have, I think, the EU and the US, they really need to get the act together.
Look at all the pieces of legislation that also concern human rights.
So as some of us know, Tajikistan is on the list of serial abusers of human religious freedom, according to the US government.
For now, I think it's since 2016 Tajikistan has been called a country of particular concern.
It's CPC. And what that means is that you're one of the worst of the worst in abuses of religious freedom.
And I think this situation, given the Ismaili identity,
given the religious aspect of that as well, in addition to the ethnic and cultural and linguistic,
that's yet another basis to turn back to that piece of legislation in US law and talk about actually implementing sanctions,
talk about actually opening up actions, visa bans, asset freezes,
everything that we've been talking about with Ukraine and Russia and now we're pretty accustomed to talking about the past three months.
Why can't we use these things to deal with the Greeks and why?
Why not? What's stopping us? Especially when we see that?
Unlike Kassem, I was quite courageous retort to Putin a few days ago that they don't recognise the Ukrainian Luhansk and do not republics.
Today Putin is embracing. Just minutes ago I saw pictures of Putin in rough mode, embracing in the airport.
The U.S. landed. That support is growing closer.
And so that should worry, you know, just on the purely geopolitical level, there's yet another reason for the West, for the U.S.,
for the EU to start talking more openly about where Rothman actually is when it comes to this and it's not helpful, he said.
This discussion about the Taliban potentially cooperating with Rothman to further crack down on Pamir is that's just despicable.
And it's just yet another reason that there can be more serious concrete measures taken to put an end to what's happening.
Thanks, Steve. You know, I was as I was speaking, I was thinking the.
I mean, I suppose one reason why to just to continue this on the subject of religious minorities, you know,
one reason why the Smileys as a global community may not want to actually be
out there as victims is because it won't necessarily do them very much good.
And, you know, you can't control your own patrons.
And I think they have quite bitter experience of this, starting with the expulsion of Asians from Uganda by Amin in 1972.
And then, of course, Afghanistan, Syria, Iran, Tajikistan.
There are a number of such places and they've always operated behind the scenes and all the rest, and that seems to have served them well enough.
But in a case like this where they are both a minority but also a regional majority, you know,
it's a very different kind of case because there's a political dimension there or a potential
political dimension which is not there when this group is in a demographic minority.
Entirely fair, but it is competitive. But, you know, that doesn't excuse the equity and silence.
Perhaps I would whatever my connexions are, I really don't know what they're doing.
I do know that they sent people as people as the West was withdrawing from Afghanistan, A.D., and sent people in.
So, you know, they are not they're willing to work with anyone.
And that's not a bad thing. I mean, they're willing to do their jobs, basically.
And I was impressed by that.
You know, they removed the the person who was running the show in Afghanistan who was a woman and replaced it with a man for obvious reasons.
I don't know what else is happening, but that was something that I found quite intriguing.
And you know what you see about Kazakhstan and that kind of shifting?
Central Asian, internal Central Asian politics. Possibly Russia will no doubt change how all the other actors in the region behave as well.
But, you know, Siddharth, I was just wondering, you know, coming back to the primaries, from what I can tell, what the government has done is,
in effect, killed all the former commanders from the days of the Civil War of the 1990, so that there are none left any longer.
And they had been, of course, the kind of symbols of resistance during the Civil War.
They had all been disarmed and all the rest that now even assembles.
They're not available. And yet what people have been telling me is that this is a way of further
disarming the society so as to not to leave any kind of autonomous leadership.
And I wonder if, you know, Human Rights Watch, for instance, has attended to this sort of thing or what is it?
Is it possible to convince the international community that these are, in fact all militants and terrorists and people from the late civil war?
And they, in fact, it's a good thing to get rid of them? Or is it ambiguous in this way or is it not ambiguous, do you think?
I mean, even if it were militants or whatever, any of the other accusations that the government stone thrown out of them,
they are first and foremost are human rights were supposed to have been respected and they were supposed to have received fair trial,
you know, like an investigation into the circumstances of their detention and whatever the charges against them are.
Unfortunately, that is absolutely impossible. In a country such as Tajikistan, we are where we are aware that the you know,
the law enforcement system and the judicial systems are just so corrupted and they are just under under so much state power and influence that,
you know, there is no independent decision making that can happen outside of direct orders
from from the the the presidential administration or the government in general.
So, you know, the government can continue saying that they are extremist terrorists and throw out all other kinds
of accusations and they can come up with supposedly evidence based on investigations or whatever.
But again, can we trust that? I personally wouldn't really be trusting all of that, and that's a really big problem.
So in terms of what Human Rights Watch, what can be done on the ground, that's of course,
to keep to keep monitoring the track of these kind of situations and to keep on demanding independent and fair trial,
even in the face of knowing that this just in so many cases is just kind of a futile thing to do.
But, you know, we are an organisation that requests and and not only from the government of Afghanistan,
but so perhaps that's where we can have some leverage or some influence is by talking to the country's international partners,
regional partners, and to bring to their attention that, you know, these are the human rights violations that we are noticing.
You know, regardless of whatever accusations of criminal activities you might have against the person,
there must be perceived procedural fairness in dealing with their cases and with regards to the, you know, field commanders.
Again, these were times of war, and we cannot go back to that time.
I mean, as I mentioned, I mean, I'm not an expert into the Civil War some or what has happened afterwards historically.
But one thing is certain that, like you had mentioned, I was just recently talking to one of my contacts from Tajikistan, from Kabul,
and they were that they they did confirm that basically all of the informal leaders of the communities have been either killed or arrested, you know.
It's it's it's almost like the whole community was just left and I don't know, headlands in a way that might be too graphic.
But this is this is deliberate as we are seeing and.
I think I mentioned previously that some of the reasons as to why there are so many ideas,
rumours going on around as to why these things keep on happening.
Obviously, you know,
the presidential administration or the US authorities in general do want to take control of the ball under their control because it's one of the,
I guess the unruly list of they're like the only remaining region in Tajikistan that still has some independent thinking.
Again, because of its autonomous status. There are different even educationally.
Right. What I'm hearing is that majority of the people in the bubble are have higher education.
And there is this societal value, a criminal value that's given to education both for women and men, which is not the case in the rest of the country.
So, you know, culturally, ethnically, linguistically, religiously, this is a community that is very separate from the rest of the.
We are definitely seeing that the authorities are doing something to limit the rights and freedoms and just that the communities have been enjoying.
I'm not sure if I answered your question. I think I got no in there, but thanks.
In fact, as you were speaking, I was thinking, you know,
going back to the issue of which you ended with of them of the distinctive minority status of Aries.
And in a previous session, we had Susie Sanchez talking about many things, but amongst others suggesting that.
Given human rights violations in Tajikistan in general, quite apart from the farmers, the possibilities might be,
instead of being seen as a kind of exceptional minority group, distinctive,
what's happening there might actually come to be seen outside the parameters.
As a kind of point of origin for a new way of.
Fighting for rights and democracy.
And if that is indeed the case, then it's an encouraging sign because, you know,
playing up the distinctive and minority status of any population is a mixed blessing, isn't it?
On the one hand, you can advocate for them, on the other hand, you know, they become even more, or,
as it were, distinctive in the from the point of view of the majority populations of that country.
And that surely would be a harmful thing. But, you know, also going back to something Steve was saying.
And perhaps you know Zeenat you and Neil as well might comment it the.
The. The internationalisation of.
The various varieties of human rights violations seen throughout the region.
And, you know, so it's not just the farmers and the rest of Tajikistan, but it's Afghanistan.
And it's the other issue that Steve raised in in in Xinjiang.
And, you know, a number of other such situations.
And they always separate it out from each other and dealt with nation by nation, aren't they?
I mean, so because it's always a state to state kind of enterprise.
And yet if we were to set them beside each other and see them as part of a single set of interconnected,
because they are interconnected in various ways, you know, one situation might set a precedent for another.
You know, the other situation might create a security problem for a third, etc.
You know, whether that might be a way of maybe people are thinking in this way, but it's new to me, you know, of considering the whole region.
So that rather than simply addressing issues state by state, they can be both analytically and perhaps even politically addressed.
I don't know how as a whole, noting the interconnection that surely should allow people,
governments in Europe and America, for instance, to be able to join the dots rather than separating these things out.
Does that make any sense at all or has that already been done?
And I have no idea. I mean, I can only answer hypothetically,
but I will do so just to try to emphasise again some of why we have such a high level of fear on the level of risk in the premise.
So if you look at the apparatus in place in China and East Turkistan,
which has been used for the repression of the weakest and what we believe is possibly a genocide in there, that apparatus has now been put in place.
Think about it might not be used in that way. It might not go to that level.
But the scale and possibility is that what we're talking about, the matters of surveillance, militarisation,
the break-up of culture, identity, the force, management of populations, all that is in place.
So you could hypothetically say one is China's heavily involving about one is seeing and understanding and learning from another.
And that's involved, you know, in a political context as well.
So hypothetically, you could say that.
But what I would say is that if you do look across the border in China, you can see the risk that is developing tangible to show.
That's yeah, that's scary. I mean, I suppose one could add Kashmir as well, which is also, in a way part of the greater region.
And there you also have kind of copycat. Mechanisms at play to some degree.
China seems to be at a level of advanced technology that is being used in Xinjiang, but is not perhaps true in these other places.
But I guess in all kinds of other ways, the enormity of it taken together is really, truly extraordinary.
And that is what stuns me. You would think it would invite far more attention if taken together.
Steve, what do you think? Is there a possibility that this might happen?
Of the genocide of, you know, considering these various situations together and try to address them in some ways together.
Wow. You know, again, I really appreciate the way in which, Neal, you're you're you're reframing in a way that's very hopeful.
Again, it's about never gets seen or heard, but.
And it is true that we often we often connect we often lose focus on Gabo in speaking about the larger picture overall in Tajikistan,
which is abysmal. But I certainly think all the worst possible scenarios are possible.
I think because the situation combines so many, as I say, it's maybe not the right word,
but there's so many creative methods of repression that have been introduced in these last years.
I mean, we saw, as I mentioned in the beginning of my remarks, a blaze,
an assassination in broad daylight, Istanbul of literally covert of an opposition figure in 2014, 2015.
I'm sorry, we've seen how many people now have been extradited, but I shouldn't use that word.
I should say kidnapped from Russia and forcibly sent back to Tajikistan.
We've now seen this in the May wrestler,
other Amiri activists who have spoken out since media personalities from all over actually of course on behalf of.
I've been talking to some of their family members and what this does is it strikes fear in the heart of all Tajiks,
in all Pamir, who live in Russia, live anywhere in the former Soviet space, even here in Kyrgyzstan, where I am.
No, I think someone alluded to this many you didn't know.
The border is now closed between Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan.
But after the conflict which developed between the two states in May 2021 or April, May 2021,
and then has reignited again this year, the Kyrgyz have placed at risk Tajik activists and opposition figures.
Amiri there's a Amiri community here and been pressuring them not to go anywhere else.
If they're going to leave Kyrgyzstan, they can only go to one other state, which is Tajikistan.
The borders are closed for Amiri is and Tajiks in general to travel outside Kyrgyzstan in any other direction.
What does that do? That means that Kyrgyzstan is actually violating its refugee convention obligations
and forcing these people back to certain arrest and maybe death and torture.
Until this transnational aspect is the as you've rightly been illuminating here, Feisal and Neal?
Not I think it requires it requires maybe, as I was saying, maybe a UN mechanism that looks at transnational repression and looks at the.
It looks at the sharing of various transnational repression tactics.
We need we need a cross jurisdictional approach to this.
But we also do need a strong focus on, you know, several UN country rapporteurs,
special rapporteurs that united to get together to decry what's happening in the course.
Then we need to see country visits. So there's a lot of things that we can do.
But the level of attention has to be raised that the Human Rights Council more than it has been.
And and I don't know if that's just because, you know, Russia and Ukraine is more, in our view, not necessarily.
I think it's it's because of this, as we keep alluding to this particular geopolitical position that Tajikistan uses to to be Rahmon uses,
I should say President Rahmon uses to be the dictator who got away with it.
Without the Afghan border, you would be Lukashenka.
Essentially without an Afghan Lukashenko, plus Afghanistan's border and also China, of course,
as Neal mentioned, this really effective borrowing of technology, which we have seen.
I don't have as much evidence about exactly what Chinese surveillance technology has been used,
but it's it's constantly alluded to by a lot of activists in Tajikistan that Tajik
surveillance technology is more and more present the way it is in Kazakhstan,
the way it is in Pakistan as well. So we have a lot of worrying factors.
So what do we do? I think we need to have, I think, as many regional conferences, as many discussions as we can that include Tajik civil society.
And one more point on this, I should say that what always made Tajikistan so interesting and different,
and when it used to stand apart as a less repressive,
if you can imagine that Central Asian state than Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan, it was the rich civil society activism and primaries.
They played a very special role in that.
I think earlier you said that or maybe Suzanne Levy, Sanchez's idea is that if this primary model of civic protest.
And somehow be spread to other parts of the country and maybe even other parts of the region.
That is inspiring. And maybe it sounds strange for me to sound hopeful at such a dark time.
But that always has been something that's attracted me to the study of human rights and is looking at those really courageous creative activists.
And many of them do come from the premieres. We have to find a way to tell their story, as Neal was saying in the beginning,
not talk about tensions and conflict and drug smugglers and narcotics operations and special operations,
but to start telling the story of of of the culture of the human rights picture, it's actually it's very sophisticated.
And how many of us know that that I forgot I forgot about this until I was reminded by some Tajik friends that the 25th anniversary.
Of the peace accords. In which the political system is supposed to rest and is supposed to operate.
Just had their 25th anniversary, I think a day ago, 27th of the 26th of June, 25 years ago,
Tajikistan, the end of the civil war was achieved through a UN peace agreement,
a UN peace agreement that established that there would be more sharing, there would be political pluralism, there would be an opposition.
And in many ways, they made Tajikistan different for quite a long period of time until things really until Rahmon realised that he could do
away with all those things and start violating human rights systematically to consolidate his and his family's hold on power.
So I think if we can tell that story, if we can start utilising more of those tools,
we start thinking back to the UN agreement that put an end to the war and we start using U.N. mechanisms the way they should be used.
And we hold the U.S. and the EU more accountable to speaking truth about what's happening.
Then perhaps we can push this forward and at least raise that ratchet up the pressure on the Tajik government.
And I don't know if Neal would say that the tensions or that we've reached a sort of Venus of repression,
that in the summer there's some at least there's not the same rate of killing as we saw a month ago.
I'm not really sure how to assess that, but I'd be curious to hear what the other panellists think about what direction this is moving in.
Yes. Go ahead. Would do either one of you want to address that really important point in just maybe like a small point.
So it does seem like to me, at least again, maybe I'm also hopeful here,
but there seems to be a certain a certain leeway in to the current situation in terms of like influencing the governments internationally.
And that's in relation to the what seems like an inevitable transfer of power from one senior to the junior to someone.
And and why I'm saying this is was it last week or the week before that?
I think it was last week. President Rahmon had addressed the situation for the first time since the May protests,
since the November protest, but specifically since May proposed.
And he kind of took all the responsibility or whatever that transpired there on himself,
even though that has been stated that it was specifically his son who was responsible for the special operations.
Now, there has been speculation and which which to me kind of makes sense that perhaps this sort of like the taking of responsibility is
dictated by Iran's desire to kind of like presents the son as this as the new generation in the eyes of the international community.
So, I mean, again, I'm not seeing myself that I'm but that's a very nice assumption.
But I thought that maybe that there is a way where we could call for investigations, put a pressure on the authorities in general,
because there is a willingness on the part of the families to kind of like, you know,
whitewash this some in the sense, yeah, then perhaps that's very a fantastical view of the situation.
That's very interesting. Actually, I don't. Neal, if you have any comment before I turn to you for our other participants,
should you want to open it up for questions now so you can either raise your hand
or write your question anonymously or by being identified and I'll read it out.
So whatever way you would like to participate in the discussion.
Sorry. Neal. Yeah, actually just in response also to what Steve said, I'll just make a few random points which I think are relevant.
So the question of the escalation. So again, we don't fully know what the motive is.
And of all the primary activists I've spoken to, they all have many have a different theory of what the ultimate motive is,
that the government there is a belief that the government invested a lot of money on a military operation and needed to have something to show for it.
But they killed Baqir and they still committed what we now believe is an atrocity.
Shortly after that. And again,
if you look at the the reason I emphasise the broader range of human rights violations against the population is that this is far beyond the
scope of targeting a few commanders and leaders and they will still be in place whenever the government plans to instigate further violence.
I don't know. But again, if you look at the algorithm of the violence, repression of civil rights, protests,
violence, it's not related to the movements of former military commanders and opposition leaders.
So that is, even if there's been a slight calming since May, that is still in place,
regardless of what we understand to be the motive of the government.
So we just can't assume that the population will be passive in this context, particularly as the economy deteriorates as well.
Yeah, I mean, the thing about learning from from other human rights violators, I've never actually just triggered me when we said this.
Like obviously one of the things we often connect with the situation in the week is,
is we talk about the reprogramming, the system of reprogramming within the community.
Now, again, I wouldn't put you on the scale of what's happening in Turkistan,
but actually one of the things which has not been too publicly spoken about is that there are similar mechanisms in place in people, you know.
So the use of public television and radio in combination with the cutting off of Internet access,
so preventing horizontal lines of communications within the communist communities means
that different settlements and areas have different perspectives on what's happened.
And it's not as if there is a fully unified community opposition.
There are populations who take different positions.
And you would see here that this is an attempt to change the attitudes of many populations to one another, you know, and it's a systematic and.
Disconnect from, you know, taking full control of public stations to not allowing children to speak in their mother tongue in the playgrounds.
Yeah. And then you have the disconnection of the Internet on top of that, which, again,
cuts horizontal communications and cuts communications with the diaspora on life.
What was a very, very nice point, the promotion of the model of community society.
I mean, it's so none of us here are married, which we should note.
And there's a reason for that. I mean, Emoji would never send me here to speak on the issue of the community when we have community partners.
But it is not safe, anybody from the Communist to be here.
But the reason I'm here is because they have a very dynamic civil society leadership which was proactive in reaching out to us and many of those
organisations and individuals who are now providing this kind of solidarity and support that they don't have never had true autonomy and give now.
But there has always been a parallel democratic system rooted in primary culture.
And I still pointed out the levels of education and health care are extraordinarily high in this region, partly because of the HIV.
And, you know, so in many ways, the communities can provide a model for democracy and provide a model for a multicultural society.
I mean, I say premier is an affront to minorities, indigenous,
because there are many different groups that whose culture is unique to this region but have different languages, phenotypes, ethnicities.
Yeah, so I think there is a lot there.
And another point about the reaction of international actors is that they don't separate what happens in the communists from the rest of the country.
And this can be a problem because again,
international human rights actors may be engaged in issues of anti-corruption and torture more broadly in Tajikistan.
And some conversations I've had is that they don't want to risk the dialogue and
progress that on best the ability to work with partners across the country,
also development actors to be engaged in the past.
Yeah, and this goes back to the point that what we're trying to say is that.
Whatever is happening today or yesterday,
the risk factor and the potential scale for the escalation of violations here is it is unique and distinct and specific.
And I think the point, you know, I mean,
that's also been involved in these meetings that our partners and allies on the Preparatory Committee have been particularly pushing,
is to have an international monitoring mechanism. Where that's located is still the question, the political process.
And for that is what we're working towards.
But we believe there's an atrocity happening, but we can't publicly say this yet, despite despite very trusted sources.
And that can't happen without access.
Now, getting an international mechanism, you know, may never happen even in some of the most you know, this is this is how we start to go for it.
But there are other means of this.
So for development actors to re-engage with our partners, that brings people, brings work, brings visibility, brings security.
And again, interestingly, when we talk about the model of the primary system, I mean, they've rebuilt their economy around tourism.
So we've got to get away from this idea of this remote poverty stricken mountain region.
It might be remote projects done, but it borders free countries and it's full of many ethnicities and cultures.
And it's rebuilt its economy on welcoming and integrating foreigners from other countries.
You know what strange thing we understand is that tourists are still going there.
The difficulty is they advertise this and the coming bookings because of the Internet access, which has been a massive killer.
Well, just when you ask what we can do, obviously we can talk about the critical big political actions.
But re-engaging development actors, promoting tourism, getting people to go there and connect is also a way of, first of all,
just bringing some desperate economy to the region,
which can take away one of the tinderbox issues and other conflicts and also providing more security and multilateral.
Thank you. I think really excellent points there.
You know, as you were speaking, I was thinking of what a friend of mine recently in horror was telling me from colleague, in fact.
That. And I didn't know whether this was a kind of old Soviet model or a Chinese model.
It seems more like the latter.
You know where in Horror City from morning to night there's kind of a radio broadcast of patriotic songs, speeches by the president, etc.
It sounds like a torture in its own right, but you from your waking moments till you go to bed,
you only hear this, which of course prevents other kinds of conversations.
And it literally interferes with your mind because you're constantly hearing it and you can't ever turn it off and it.
Even though it's not as it will physical violence, it's horrific enough.
It's psychological violence in so many ways. I was also thinking of.
The role of the diaspora. There's a significant part, Mary Diaspora, not just in Russia, but now in different parts of the world.
And in the earlier, in earlier years, whenever something happened, 2012, etc., you had, you know,
demonstrations in front of the U.N. in New York City, for instance, and in London in front of the embassy.
And now you don't seem to see much of that.
And I suppose people have been threatened or are frightened because they all have relatives in the Palmers.
So, you know, do you think there is any role apart from.
Connecting with people like yourselves and others outside the country, for the diaspora,
for those who I know will, part of it are in a state of great distress for very good reasons.
But what they had been doing, which was initially so riveting and cheering,
was literally turning up in London or New York or whether it was in Berlin to make known what was happening in their country.
So any words on diaspora activism and what might be possible?
For any of you. I would just maybe briefly.
I. I'm in touch with some of the activists again.
But there are not people who are not in for nothing right now.
Obvious otherwise wouldn't be possible to talk to them.
But I was really just impressed with the way they've been trying to keep track of everything that's happening.
In about an hour shared this document that's like 54 pages, which kind of has this chronology of events starting from way back to seven,
12, probably 12 to 14, 18, 21, 22 events and also diving deep into the historical background of the region itself.
And that's really useful for organisations like ours or, you know, international actors in general.
And I probably say it again because we don't have access to people on the ground and we can agree we're not really seeing a lot of the,
as Steven mentioned, that we don't we're not seeing a lot of these photographs or videos or anything like that.
And I understand that this is also quite dangerous and risky for people who are in the region,
who are like on the ground, the right to to to even have these kind of photographs maybe on their mobile devices.
But it's just so important to really, even if it's not photographs or videos,
but to keep evidence just to get witness statements from their relatives, whichever way that is possible.
Because, you know, for us, it's it's even less possible to reach out to people because,
you know, I guess, again, as much as people are just contacting us,
I guess, you know, like representatives of different organisations, you know,
foreigners in general that can already already threaten them, you know, and.
But there are a lot of risks for cooperation with foreigner, foreign agents and whatever the authorities can come up with.
So I would say, yes, just keep track of everything that's happening and whenever possible to share with the outside world.
Steve any. Reflections. Well, we do need to we need to support the Amiri diaspora as much as possible in this moment.
It is too dangerous,
but I'm hoping that the moment will come relatively soon when we can start to see again the types of protests and demonstrations that that
I also I both of also took and a lot of country were being inspired to see these actions often in London and in DC and other places.
You're right. I do think, though, that.
Well, one thing that I've noticed.
Take Turkmenistan. I've been surprised within not I don't know what if I want to call it a renaissance or something.
But we've seen a sort of upsurge in in really courageous activism by brave Turkmen exiles and activists over the past two and a half years,
which was never present before. And there you have just as repressive a model as Tajikistan.
And that's something that that it will certainly happen.
But our job at this moment is and Neil and Snyder said,
do everything we can to support both through these international mechanisms and just in the public eye.
Speaking with journalists,
I think one mechanism we haven't mentioned as much just yet in our conversation today is the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe,
which probably has, you know, through the Moscow mechanism,
which is what it's called for these independent investigations or enquiry commission commissions of enquiry that can be held without cooperation.
Of the government if a consensus or a majority, I should say, not a pure consensus.
Majority of states of the OSCE agree that there's a need for a commission of enquiry.
The Moscow mechanism can be it can be implemented.
We had that on Chechnya.
We've had the Turkmen activists looking at that for Turkmenistan, for the hundreds that have been disappeared for over 20 years there.
So I think that is a place where we can in the coming months and perhaps in September,
when we have the annual meeting of the OSCE, maybe see some activism around that.
But but I also think, as I was saying before, the you know, the model of human rights investigations is changing.
And in the aftermath of war crimes committed in the Azerbaijan Armenia conflict, two years ago, I learnt about the work of an Armenian organisation,
a new small human rights group that started just as I was saying, collecting testimonies immediately of relatives.
So Armenians in the community going to document crimes and human rights violations in real
time in a way that Human Rights Watch and Amnesty and others don't have the same capacity.
And of course, that's impossible right now, given the premiers don't have the sort of cover and the ability, the safety to do this investigative work.
And in fact, that is the work that was done in 2012 by men who share an activist is now detained after the 2012 operation.
But we do need that training is, as Neil has said now, we need that immediately.
We need that yesterday. And I think, again, that's something that let me just say again, sorry to be on the soapbox, but why the US embassy?
Is not speaking more more loudly about this is I think it's problematic and
I think it's allowed this situation to reach the point that it has somehow.
We've normalised the repression in Tajikistan for a long time now, a long time ago,
at least since 2015, 2016, with the total destruction of the opposition.
And it's only in that situation that I think this primary operation, this this the all these crimes can be committed.
And we need to ask ourselves, why have why did we let this happen?
Why do we let it get to this point? You know, how did it become okay for repression to stand, to be so all encompassing in never ending?
It's not okay. And so I think, you know, I take every chance I get to sort of plea with any journalist,
friends, New York Times or wherever, just to write about this situation.
We're not seeing enough of that. I wish we would see a little bit more.
So maybe we can think collectively amongst academics and experts and policymakers,
the people that can speak out more safely and do that in a systematic way.
I think that could be chapter two.
You know, of the types of meetings that Neil was describing is the media effort and sustaining the attention so that we we,
we, we make we raise the cost. We raise the price for the repression.
Thanks, Tevi. You know, I entirely agree with you.
And I mean, I understand why, you know,
newspapers in London or wherever might not be so interested in carrying stories about a place they know almost nothing about,
where, you know, no major Western interests seem to be involved and where even the numbers of,
you know, killed, injured seem derisory in comparison with other places.
Horrific, though, those incidents might be.
But I have never really understood why other countries.
Western countries or indeed other non-Western countries.
But I mentioned Western ones in particular because they have far more leverage and power.
Don't do even quite easy things which will not compromise their interests in any significant way, as far as I can tell.
You know, just calling in the Tajik ambassador for a dressing down.
You know, that alone will send alarm will start alarm bells ringing in Dushanbe.
I mention that because this recently happened in India, which is a big, powerful country, you know,
where two government spokespeople went on television in India saying things about Muslims and Islam that were by any account reprehensible.
And the governments of some very small Gulf states objected not, I think,
because of just simply the religious dimension, but they called in the Indian ambassadors saying,
is this the official position of the government of India since these people were official
spokespeople and the Indian government had to walk back and apologise and fire,
you know, fire one of these spokespeople and put the other one to leave.
And it took very small countries. Okay, admittedly, but the large and did the US living there.
But you know, the White House and the State Department make generic noises about religious freedom, but nothing like this ever happens.
You know, whereas if you were to call in the Ambassador Symbolical, that gesture is it's a significant one.
I've always been surprised. Can just respond really quick to what you're saying before we leave.
This point is absolutely true. I mean, Iceland in the General Assembly was able to take very important initiatives on accountability in Syria.
We've seen. It doesn't have to be P-5 members of the Security Council doing these things.
You can do a whole range of things. And and one point on the leverage, I think, you know,
I've made an interesting point about this moment that Rahmon wants to pass power to his son and could that provide leverage?
That's one point I do think I think she's right that that has to be exploited.
The opportunity of whatever legitimacy Rahman and his son are seeking.
We need to exploit it, use it to the advantage of human rights.
But the other point I would make about leverage, perhaps,
is that and this goes away from the legal or the moral human rights arguments to the purely sort of security minded people.
But I look at the cracking. Entergy goes down, the repression Entergy.
And what did it also contribute to after the opposition was destroyed and civil society was dismantled in 2014, 2015?
Well, that coincides with a large outmigration of Tajiks to oasis territories, thousands and thousands.
It contributes to a lot of regional, regional instability and thousands of people,
including notorious figures from places that were sort of forgotten about.
Now, because that's not where the focus of the attention is,
but the instability and the human rights abuses perpetrated inside Pakistan contribute to population movement to to to extremism.
And all these things should worry us. And as I mentioned, international assassination by Tajik authorities in Turkish territory.
We had also, sadly and tragically, one of the only successful ice.
Operations in Dungarpur in 2018 that took the lives of several bicycle tourists.
If we think back to that time in Austin because of and the way the government handled it was awful and irresponsible and absurd.
And so all of these things need to be conjured up.
We need to remind all the international partners that this type of behaviour, it puts everyone at risk.
It contributes to regional lawlessness and insecurity.
And it does also, you know, to the extent there's a singular focus on fleeting, I think, you know,
weakening the repression of other post-Soviet states is important for changing this utterly bad trend that we see emanating from Russia.
So all of that has to be taken up.
So I apologise if I'm being too ambitious, but I am looking for answers, I'm looking for approaches and I'm hoping that I'll find them.
Thanks very much, Steve. That's really great.
We should we should, you know, close up now and perhaps, you know, sticking with the same points of what might be done.
Shall we, Neil? And then see that you can have the last word.
Okay. So, yeah, I mean, the main the main thing that we're pushing for now is to have a form of international mechanisms monitoring.
The main thing we need is monitoring. By whatever means, but obviously the one with the most power or leverage possible.
Actually, just to go back to Steve's point about some of the more basic things, the embassy, I mean,
what is it at the US embassy just go to to give out to meet with its partners to monitor the projects it's funding that.
You know, I think I can link this to your question about the diaspora.
I mean I mean, I think most of us just I mean, the diaspora may be magnificent in the response.
I very rarely seen something like this. But the security I mean, the only reason I read it is because we have a brand name,
which means people listen to us and that touches authorities will not rest my family.
Otherwise they could lead this campaign themselves, but also look into the role of the AKP.
And I do wonder about the building of solidarity amongst the Somali community, who are big supporters of families.
There are business connexions linked, education, exchange programmes linked to that.
And I wonder if the lack of visibility of the AKP ends does prevent that.
And obviously, you know, for example,
the US this morning as it has a strong diaspora movement there has a strong community of itself which can be influential.
And I do think developing within civil society and not just we tend to his friend Patrick is
stand with Europe like Europe and Central Asia despite where it is on the map but building,
you know, a solidarity movement within civil society.
So it's more visible beyond those specialised organisations and with those organisations who campaign, I mean view is not campaigning.
I mean we do a little bit but we're not on the combating organisation, you know each other, we all sit as watchdog works.
It's we're not that those organisations are involved in this you know, as much,
but also let's look, look towards movements in Asia as well and see where we are.
And just it was actually just triggered me actually, you know, you know the the selling points, you know, of this trade talks like this,
as you were saying, Feisal, I mean, just when we reflect on the primary community, just imagining the geopolitical concerns, having this floor,
a pluralistic, democratic, open, progressive, autonomous region sitting on a border with Afghanistan and China, if that's not incentive enough,
you know, for those governments who can have an influence to want to work towards, you know, and that's why it's important.
They understand they understand the culture, you know, of the people we're dealing with.
It's not just another human rights situation in Tajikistan.
So I think also promoting primary culture, identity and as I said, the economic benefits of that, the importance of that to maintain the community.
What is it? The pressure is another strategy we can look at.
I mean, I would encourage any Oxford students during the summer holidays to take their backpacks and head off to the primary as well.
They will be welcomed and perfectly safe. Thanks, Neal.
And of course, it's an extraordinarily culturally rich and beautiful region as well.
Before turning to Zeenat, I just wanted to say on on your comment about the global Islamic community, sadly, Ismailis don't know what's happening.
Only the Tajiks know or the Central Asian Ismailis know.
The community is very well networked globally, but nothing is ever said about what is happening in Kabul.
So my mother, for instance, doesn't know, has no idea, you know, and even though I've been, you know, I used to go there so frequently.
I know, but even my close relatives don't know. And that's, I suspect, because the community's institutions want the community needs to be controlled.
And, you know, all decisions are taken in its name by people within the institutions.
But, you know, they're they're not keen on people actually voicing their opinions and all the rest because then,
you know, anyway, that's my my insider's view of the situation.
Zeenat. Thank you. I just completely agree with everything that you have already mentioned and Steve
had mentioned just to kind of like to reiterate two of the most important points.
I mean, all of the points are extremely important is just something that I would like to reiterate here,
is that the need for an immediate and independent investigation into the allegations of abuse of power
and extrajudicial killings of protesters and regular residents of reform and similar and anything,
everything that happens in rock and including to this also investigation of reports of harassment of residents by law enforcement services since.
I mean at least that the the protest the protests in May in addition to the lack of
progress with investigating the death of Tunisia because back in November 2021,
there have been reports of scores of people both inside and outside, of getting harassed and getting kidnapped again,
as Stephen mentioned, receiving threatening notes, messages from the law enforcement and etc.
And of course,
to release all the independent bloggers and journalists that were detained in relation to the professional activities that's including Wi-Fi,
Carnival Travel. We talked about her and the others and just like sort of like the last point I was I really like to see thank you so much
for sharing this because you mentioned that why is it so normalised nowadays that human rights violations in particular,
some are just basically the norm and everybody kind of least lives with it and lets it happen because you know, well, what do you want us to do?
And that is absolutely that's the wrong thing to do when it comes to human rights, equality, democracy and human rights.
So I think, of course, the international partners for governments and international organisations and inter-governmental organisations,
I mean I just call for us and I will keep on pushing for this as well as for my work that we don't forget.
This is a human rights equality that is that are enshrined in the international conventions that Didrikson is part of and signatory on.
All of that stuff has to be respected and we have to mind and not let the cynicism kind of rule our expectations and assumptions about the G7.
Thank you very much indeed. And thank you all. I think that was a really wonderfully interesting conversation about a pretty dismal situation.
Sadly, though, I was relieved to hear that the scale of violence seems to have tapered off at the moment.
But that's the way it's been presented over the last number of years. It goes up and down and down these moments of crisis.
And I suppose the hopeful thing is that despite everything, the government still doesn't seem to have, you know, stamped out all resistance.
But how long we can live on hope on that matter is another question altogether.
But in the meantime, let me thank you all again, Zeenat, Neil and Steve,
for spending your time talking about this issue, which has which receives all too little attention.
And I very much hope that this recording will do some small work in increasing an awareness of the situation there.
So thank you all again and I hope to meet you all individually in person sometime soon enough.
Likewise. Thank you so much, Michael. Thank you. This is really, really meaningful.
Thank you. Thank you very much. You're welcome.
Bye bye. Bye bye. Thanks, Claire.
Thanks.