Tajik Protest Plan Squashed Before it Starts

The Tajik government’s frenetic crackdown on plans for an opposition demonstration is a gut reaction to fears of a “Facebook revolution” inspired by the Ukrainian uprising earlier this year, analysts say. 

The prosecution service issued a statement on October 7 banning an opposition movement called Group 24 on the grounds that it was an extremist organisation seeking to overthrow the government.

The group had issued a call on Facebook for an anti-government rally to be held in the capital Dushanbe on October 10. The event never happened.

In an interview for a Russian news agency on October 7, Tajik interior minister Ramazon Rahimzoda described Group 24 members as “criminals” who wanted to destabilise Tajikistan on the instructions of unspecified “foreign masters”.

Group 24 was set up by in 2012 by Umarali Quvvatov, a businessman who fled the country after his assets were taken over. He claimed that powerful regime figures had appropriated his business. An attempt to extradite him from Dubai last year failed, and he remains abroad.

On October 1, Quvvatov posted a video called “Free Tajikistan from Tyranny” on his Facebook page and urged people in Tajikistan to come to the rally.

Six days later, police detained the parents, sister and brother-in-law of another Group 24 member, Sharofiddin Gadoev, a cousin of Quvvatov who has been in Spain since last year. The Tajik government has issued an international warrant for his arrest on fraud and smuggling charges, according to RFE/RL radio.

After Quvvatov’s Facebook statement went viral among Tajik internet users, many websites were suddenly blocked. The Asia-Plus news agency calculated that around 300 sites became unavailable including Facebook, YouTube and the Russian social media site Vkontakte.

The website blocks brought criticism from the OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media, Dunja Mijatović. In an October 7 statement, Mijatović said the repeated blocking of websites in Tajikistan over recent months was “a worrying and disturbing trend”.

In a separate development, Asia-Plus reported that security forces in Dushanbe blocked off the city’s main square for several hours on October 4, in what looked like an exercise to practise containing a demonstration.

So is Group 24 really capable of mobilising discontent with the Tajikistan? Not really, according to political analyst Parviz Mullojanov.

Rather than instigating protests Group 24 would only be able to attempt to capitalise on demonstrations if they took off across the country. And while many people are certainly unhappy, they are not yet ready to take to the streets and brave government reprisals, Mullojanov said.

All it has done is to “remind the authorities of its existence and prod them into blocking websites”, he added.

Mullojanov believes the government is particularly nervous at the moment because of the uprising in Ukraine that forced President Viktor Yanukovich to flee to Russia and brought in a new administration. Add to that the scaremongering of Moscow media – which have a strong presence of Tajikistan – warning of behind-the-scenes plotting by Western governments apparently desperate to see the downfall of other post-Soviet regimes.

Another factor, Mullojanov said, was the worsening economic climate in Russia, a result of Western sanctions, which could lead to job losses for some of the hundreds of thousands of Tajik labour migrants there. Their return home could make the bad economic situation in Tajikistan even worse.

“The authorities are concerned that a recession could raise social tensions and create the conditions for political instability,” he said.

A Dushanbe-based sociologist, who asked to remain anonymous, said it was not only about Ukraine – the “Arab Spring” uprising and Tajikistan’s own recent history were ever-present in the minds of leaders.

Social networking sites played a critical role in mobilising people in the 2011 uprisings across North Africa and the Middle East.

“That explains why the internet has been totally blocked in regions outside the capital, where the authorities believe the protest mood is high,” she said.

The sociologist also recalled how in Tajikistan, one small demonstration in the early 1990s snowballed into a larger confrontation, which in turn led to a civil war that lasted from 1992 until 1997.

“Thirty-four people from the Pamir region held a demonstration outside the Communist Party Central Committee building, and the next day, several thousand people turned up on the main square,” she said.

A retired police officer told IWPR that the security forces had over-reacted in a bid to show their political masters how well-prepared they were, and had inflated the danger posed by Group 24 to strengthen their case.

“Their exaggerated reading of the information circulating on the internet sparked fears at the highest level about [a form of] opposition which effectively does not exist in Tajikistan,” he said.

Nargis Hamrabaeva is an IWPR contributor in Tajikistan.