2 Tajik Opposition Activists Go Missing in Turkey
The DiplomatIn less than a month, two prominent Group 24 activists have disappeared in Turkey, raising concerns that they have been or will be sent back to Tajikistan. On March 11, Group 24 – a banned Tajik opposition movement – issued a statement that its leader, Sohrab Zafar, had gone missing from Turkey. On February 25, Zafar told RFE/RL’s Tajik Service, Radio Ozodi, that Nasimjon Sharifov, another Group 24 activist, had left his home on February 23 and had not been heard from since. As I wrote in 2016, part of an article charting Tajik efforts to silence opposition outside of the country: Several Group 24 members have been arrested in other countries at the request of Tajikistan, pressured into “voluntarily” returning to face charges, or have disappeared completely. Ubaydullo Saidi, a representative of Group 24, told Radio Ozodi, “We fear for fate, because if he returns to Tajikistan, he is threatened with torture and a long term of imprisonment.” Steve Swerdlow, a rights lawyer and associate professor of the Practice of Human Rights at the University of Southern California, told Radio Ozodi that he’d recently been in contact with Zafar to discuss the disappearance of Sharifov.
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