The United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) has expressed serious apprehension over reports suggesting that the government of Uzbekistan is regressing from the positive strides Muslim-majority Central Asian nation.

An independent and bipartisan nine-member federal body that monitors and reports on freedom of religion or belief overseas and makes policy recommendations to the U.S. president, secretary of state and Congress, the USCIRF said in a September 22 statement that in the previous week there have been reports of Uzbek authorities carrying out raids targeting individuals based on religious affiliation.

Allegedly, these individuals have been fined and some are subjected to administrative detention. Additionally, the report noted, it has been reported that authorities have compelled Muslim men to shave their beards, while school administrators have exerted pressure on schoolgirls to either remove their hijabs or adjust the way they wear them.

Initially, Uzbek President Shavkat Mirziyoyev achieved significant progress in his presidency in promoting freedom of religion or belief by reversing many of the problematic policies of the previous administration, stated USCIRF Commissioner and former chair Nury Turkel.

“As Uzbekistan continues to reverse course on its reforms and further crack down on religious freedom,” Turkel said.

In its 2023 annual report, the USCIRF advised the State Department to include Uzbekistan on its Special Watch List due to the country’s widespread violations of religious freedom. In June, the monitor organized a conversation featuring the former United Nations Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Religion or Belief and a representative from Human Rights Watch to assess the state of religious freedom in the country.

Religious practice in Uzbekistan is greatly restricted and is influenced by official policies through legislation and unofficial methods enforced by security services and law enforcement agencies, the USCIRF statement said.

In early September, the Legislative Chamber of Uzbekistan’s parliament, known as the Oliy Majlis, advanced amendments to the nation’s criminal and administrative codes, the statement noted, explaining that the amendments were apparently aimed at safeguarding the state’s secular character but were expected to have potential implications for the religious freedom of individuals.

The statement pointed out that so far this year, Muslims have experienced arrests and incarceration due to their religious practices and in some cases, Muslim citizens chose to practice self-censorship out of concerns for their safety.

The USCIRF is especially troubled by reports indicating that a senior Uzbek government official has stated that civil servants must make a choice between their personal beliefs and their professional careers, said Commissioner David Curry.

“Everyone in Uzbekistan should be able to live and practice their religion in accordance with their conscience. The U.S. government must not overlook Uzbekistan’s declining religious freedom situation and should urge its counterparts there to protect this crucial right in line with Uzbekistan’s international commitments.”

Source: World Religion News

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(Berlin, October 6, 2023) – The authorities in Tajikistan have detained relatives of their country’s opposition diaspora members who held protests during President Emomali Rakhmon’s recent visit to Germany, Human Rights Watch said today. Almost 50 relatives in Tajikistan were detained and questioned. Some were released, but many remain behind bars on unclear charges.

“The Tajik authorities have been retaliating and imposing collective punishment for years for political activity by activists in exile,” said Syinat Sultanalieva, Central Asia researcher at Human Rights Watch. “The arrests are a blatant and grave violation of Tajikistan’s international human rights obligations, and all those detained should be immediately released and all other acts of retaliation ended.”

On September 28, the day of President Rakhmon’s arrival in Germany, activists of the National Alliance of Tajikistan and Group 24 – both organizations banned in Tajikistan for their opposition to the government – organized protest rallies outside the Tajik embassy. On September 29, some activists threw eggs at the car in which President Rakhmon was traveling on his way to meet with German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier. On September 30, Tajik law enforcement began detaining relatives of the rally participants and known opposition members, totaling at least 47 people, according to a tally shared with Human Rights Watch.

The detainees, including elderly grandparents and children, ranging between an 81-year-old man and a one-and-a-half-year-old child, were apprehended without explanation and reportedly subjected to ill-treatment, threats, blackmail, and insults. Many of the relatives were recorded in videos, apparently condemning the actions of their relatives as well as the activities of the two opposition groups, and calling for the dissidents to return to Tajikistan. The circumstances under which the relatives participated in the videos are unclear. Tajikistan has pressured detainees to make such videos in the past.

Tajik authorities have long practiced collective punishment for actions of the government’s foreign based critics, intensifying especially after 2015 and 2016, when the country’s only opposition groups – Islamic Renaissance Party of Tajikistan and Group 24 – were labeled terrorists and banned. The National Alliance of Tajikistan , a EU based alliance of opposition dissidents formed in 2018 in Warsaw, was banned in 2019 and also labeled a terrorist group.

Thirteen of the nearly thirty participants in the Berlin protesters have published a call to the Tajikistan government to stop harassing and punishing their relatives in response to family members exercising their right to freedom of expression and freedom of assembly. The head of the exile group, Sharofiddin Gadoev, reported that his elderly mother was detained on October 1 and blamed for his role in the protests. He said she was reportedly asked by law enforcement officers, “Why can’t he just live peacefully,” without engaging in any political activism.

Tajik authorities have not commented on the detentions.

The United States, European Union, and other international actors should condemn these shameful and inexcusable actions by the Tajik government and press them to end these abuses and for Tajikistan to uphold its international obligations to respect freedom of association, assembly, and expression. Officials responsible for the arbitrary detentions and other serious and systematic human rights violations in the country, should be held to account.

“The outrageous punishment of relatives as proxy for political activists in exile is fundamentally unlawful and shreds multiple basic international human rights norms and obligations,” Sultanalieva said. “Tajik authorities should immediately release the detained and refrain from further retaliation.”

Source: HRW News

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Kazakhstan has signed an agreement with Beijing to set immigration curbs on ethnic Kazakh nationals of China, including the sharing of information on each others’ citizens and the potential repatriation of asylum-seekers who cross their common border, Radio Free Asia has learned.

The deal, voted through the lower house of Kazakhstan’s parliament on Sept. 20, requires both countries to inform each other and provide details of any “violations of entry, stay or exit regulations,” Kazakhstan’s Azattyq Ruhy news agency reported.

It comes as China marks 10 years of its “Belt and Road” regional aid, investment and global influence program, and as its state media lauded Kazakhstan as a “pioneer in jointly building” the scheme.

The agreement allows each country to veto applications by its nationals for citizenship in the other, and will make Kazakhstan less safe for members of ethnic minority groups from China’s Xinjiang region, while making it much harder for those still in China to flee the country to escape persecution, rights activists and emigre Kazakhs said.

It also places mutually agreed quotas on visas and visa-free entry across the two countries’ shared border.

The deal effectively gives Chinese officials the power of veto over applications for Kazakhstan citizenship made by ethnic Kazakhs who hold Chinese passports, according to Bekzat Maksutkhan, who heads the Kazakhstan-based rights group Atajurt.

“They need to get the consent of the Chinese side if they want to become citizens of Kazakhstan,” he said. “Also, the Kazakhstan government is obliged to repatriate anyone who immigrated from China and has become a Kazakh national, if the Chinese government requests it.”

Immigration hurdles

Nurlan Kuhedubai, who emigrated to Kazakhstan from Xinjiang as a child and now lives in Almaty, says it is already much harder for Chinese nationals to settle in Kazakhstan than it used to be.

“The Chinese and Kazakhstan authorities have been joining forces to persecute Chinese Kazakhs over the past six or seven years,” he told Radio Free Asia. “[They are preventing] Kazakhs from emigrating to Kazakhstan.”

Rights activist and YouTuber Serikzhan Bilash said there is now a crucial bureaucratic hurdle in place that wasn’t there before.

Previously, someone applying for Kazakhstan citizenship could simply declare that they renounced their Chinese nationality, but under the new agreement, they must produce an official certificate from the Chinese government before they can cease being a national of that country, he told Radio Free Asia.

“The Kazakhstan immigration bureau requires Kazakhs from Xinjiang to cancel their Chinese nationality at a Chinese embassy or consulate,” he said. “But the embassy and consulates make things difficult [for them] and refuse to cancel their [Chinese citizenship].”

Many Kazakhs fled mass incarceration and other forms of persecution in Xinjiang, thinking Kazakhstan would be a safe haven for them, Serikzhan said, only to find that Beijing is now able to have the final say over their nationality.

He said Kazakh herders are also required to give up any grazing rights in Xinjiang before they can give up their Chinese nationality.

“Administratively accountable”

Kazakhstan doesn’t allow dual citizenship, and anyone caught between their Chinese nationality and Kazakhstan citizenship can be punished for violations of that rule.

More than 400 people have been “held administratively accountable” by the Kazakhstan authorities for holding dual nationality since the beginning of this year, according to local media reports in Kazakhstan.

China’s state-backed Global Times newspaper ran an interview with Chinese Ambassador to Kazakhstan Zhang Xiao earlier this month, in which he said the anniversary was “a new starting point for China-Kazakhstan cooperation.”

“China will continue to strengthen security cooperation with Central Asian countries through bilateral channels and within multilateral frameworks such as the UN and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization,” Zhang told the paper.

“China will actively implement global security initiatives and practice a new concept of common, comprehensive, cooperative, and sustainable security,” he said.

Official figures show that there are around 1.5 million Kazakhs in China, mostly concentrated in and around the Ili Kazakh Autonomous Prefecture.

China once welcomed Kazakhs who wished to relocate from Kazakhstan, but the mass targeting of ethnic minorities in Xinjiang prompted many Kazakhs with Chinese nationality to head back in the other direction.

Chinese restrictions on the free movement of ethnic Kazakhs with Chinese nationality to neighboring Kazakhstan have sparked cross-border tensions in recent years.

Source: Rfa News

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