Two Years After Protest Crackdown, Tajikistan’s Journalists Have Gone Into Exile. Here’s What’s Lost When Journalists Flee.

In Tajikistan, where independent journalists have faced mounting pressures for years, the spring of 2022 may be remembered as the last great gasp of on-the-ground reporting. 

That was when Tajik security forces violently suppressed protests in the autonomous region of Gorno-Badakhshan, home to the country’s sizable Pamiri minority. 

Residents had turned out in growing numbers to peacefully call for justice after a local youth leader died in police custody. But in response, Tajik authorities launched what they called an “anti-terrorism operation,” using rubber bullets and tear gas to disperse the crowds. As many as 40 people were killed and 200 others were detained and tortured.  

Local reporters, bloggers, and activists covered the crackdown, sharing photographs and videos of the violence and its aftermath. When authorities blocked the internet in Gorno-Badakhshan, Tajik journalists abroad provided an information lifeline, posting dozens of the images and firsthand accounts that detailed the deaths of the protesters and the security forces deemed responsible. 

“Tajik authorities saw in GBAO [Gorno-Badakhshan], with its local informal leaders and civil society, a region that was not fully under government control,” said Marius Fossum, a Central Asia expert with the Norwegian Helsinki Committee, a human rights group. “What the authorities tried to eradicate was a sense of autonomy and independence.” 

The aftermath of the crackdown has been the near-total extinction of independent journalistic voices inside the country. At least six journalists and information-gatherers have been sentenced to severe prison terms ranging from seven to 21 years for covering the Gorno-Badakhshan protests. Many more have chosen to flee the country to join fellow journalists  operating in exile, competing for sources at a time when audiences back home have few places to turn for reliable news about unemployment, energy rationing, and a looming presidential transition. 

“When a journalist is in the country, he has the opportunity to personally interact with people, observe events, and draw conclusions based on direct experience,” said Shavkati Muhammad, a journalist who fled Tajikistan in 2015 and now works with the Payom TV online news service from an undisclosed location in Europe. “Covering events from abroad is a serious challenge.” 

Steady Silencing of Dissent

The crackdown in Gorno-Badakhshan is just the latest chapter in what free-press advocates say has been a steady campaign by Tajik President Emomali Rahmon to control and eliminate independent journalism. 

The country once had a relatively robust media environment, with independent papers like Najot (which means “Salvation” in Tajik) and Nigoh (“View”) adding to the output of non-state news agencies Ozodagon and Tojnews. 

But Rahmon, who has amassed enormous wealth and political power during more than 30 years leading the country, intensified pressure on independent media following a massive crackdown on the political opposition in 2015. 

Leading journalists like Najot editor in chief Hikmatullo Saifullozoda and Abdughahor Davlat of the popular website Nahzad were detained and sentenced to lengthy prison terms. 

Many outlets were forced to close or to move out of the country and form the vanguard of Tajikistan’s exile journalism movement with projects like Bombod.com, Isloh.tv, and Azda.tv, which has partnered with OCCRP. 

Independent voices, however, could still be found in out-of-the-way places like Gorno-Badakhshan. One Tajik journalist, who fled for Berlin to avoid persecution in the wake of the protests, said journalists and activists in the region spoke more openly than their counterparts in Dushanbe when it came to criticizing the government. 

At a time when Tajik officials are consumed with managing Rahmon’s heavily anticipated transition from power, the journalist said, the vocal Gorno-Badakhshan protests were seen as a “dangerous” threat to government narratives on national unity.

“The protest was setting a precedent that might infect other regions of the republic where protest sentiments are also high,” said the journalist, who requested anonymity out of concern for their personal safety. “The brutal repression in [Gorno-Badakhshan] was a message to other regions about what might happen to those who dare to challenge the current regime.” 

The most prominent of the reporters arrested during the Gorno-Badakhshan protests was Ulfatkhonim Mamadshoeva, a civic activist and former university journalism instructor in Dushanbe. Mamadshoeva was sentenced to 21 years following a closed-door trial.

Other journalists, including bloggers and videographers, are serving sentences of between seven and 11 years in jail. Some, like Mamadshoeva, are in their 60s, while others represent a new generation of young journalists. Abdullo Gurbati, a journalist and documentary filmmaker sentenced to 7.5 years in prison, is still in his 20s.

Criminal charges have even been leveled against journalists who covered the protests from outside the country. Anora Sarkorova, a former BBC reporter and native of Gorno-Badakhshan who lives in Europe, used her contacts to post a steady stream of images and information on her social media accounts throughout the crackdown and its aftermath. 

Nearly two years later, she learned that she and her husband, fellow journalist Rustamjon Joniyev, had been charged with publicly inciting “extremist activities” through their work. 

Sarkorova was informed about the charges by her mother, who still lives in Tajikistan and had been visited by police; Amnesty International reported the couple’s relatives received threatening messages and interrogations as a form of pressure by proxy. 

Despite such tactics, Sarkorova remains defiant. “We will not apologize for revealing information about mass human rights violations, killings, torture, and rapes in Tajikistan,” she wrote on her Facebook page. 

Fossum of the Norwegian Helsinki Committee says the suppression of independent voices both inside and outside the country cuts off a vital conversation between citizens and their government and may lead to even greater unrest. 

“Authorities have deprived the population of legitimate avenues to channel grievances, but this doesn’t mean these issues and grievances go away,” he said. “At the same time, authorities are depriving themselves of information about what is going on among the population and cutting off their access to the mood of the people. This is very dangerous.” 

‘Difficult to Convey at a Distance’ 

What remains for many ordinary Tajiks is an increasingly desolate information landscape. Reporting on high-level corruption and Rahmon’s long-anticipated handover to his son, Rustam Emomali, occasionally makes international headlines. But inside the country, basic survival is also a paramount concern. 

As the country heads into months of frigid winter weather, many residents are receiving just 10 hours of electricity a day due to power rationing introduced in October. And unemployment is on the rise as labor migrants have been ejected en masse by Moscow in the wake of March terrorist attacks carried out by Tajik gunmen. Many Tajik families, dependent on seasonal remittances, can no longer afford basic necessities. 

Muhammad, the Payom TV journalist, said he has had to reduce the amount of news he can produce due to the difficulty of finding solid sources, many of whom have themselves been driven underground. 

“When you work from a distance, you need to strive to ensure that the information you get is relevant and reliable,” he said. “You need to avoid spreading rumors or distorted data.” 

While working abroad allows him the freedom to speak freely, Muhammad says lack of access to the ground comes with a heavy cost. “Personal contact with sources is often more effective,” he said. “It allows for a deeper understanding of context and emotions. Those things are difficult to convey at a distance.” 

Press watchdogs worry that dwindling access to sources and audiences, combined with higher costs of living in Europe and elsewhere, put the ranks of exiled journalists from Tajikistan and elsewhere in peril of dwindling down to nothing. 

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), which has compiled resources for journalists forced into exile, notes that many reporters leave their home countries under traumatic circumstances and may need years to navigate the transition. 

Many choose to move on to a new profession entirely: CPJ reports that only 20 percent of the journalists it has assisted continue to work in journalism after going into exile. 

Gulnoza Said, who monitors Europe and Central Asia for CPJ, said journalists in Tajikistan face a stark choice. “Either go to jail, moreover for many years, or leave the country and go into exile. And unfortunately, in comparison to journalists leaving countries like Russia and Belarus, Tajik journalists in exile receive far less attention,” she said.