Over the past few months, police in Tajikistan have detained three bloggers on charges of immorality. Experts suggest this is a way for the authorities to tighten their grip on public opinion.
On 18 January, the Department of Internal Affairs in Dushanbe arrested a 21-year-old blogger Habibullo Himmatzoda for five days. He was accused of “spreading offensive videos full of abusive expressions and foul language”.
Earlier in December, Saida Latifova, a 28-year-old resident of Dushanbe was amerced on the same charge. Authorities did not disclose the amount she had to pay. According to the police, the blogger “used foul language to insult other interlocutors during a live broadcast on the Tik-Tok social network”.
In both cases, the law enforcement agencies did not specify what words and expressions were the reason for the detention. However, they did publish a photo of the handcuffed bloggers.
The biggest splash on social media caused the arrest of 19-year-old Buston resident Fatima Kurbanova in late November 2022. The Dushanbe police force accused her of “distributing sexually explicit videos and using abusive language”. The authorities did not specify which videos they were referring to. Fatima Kurbanova was known on social media with only one phrase: “It’s so cold outside, your balls will freeze up”. The court ordered the girl to be arrested for 10 days.
Following Kurbanova’s detention, users of the Tajik social media segment broke down into two groups. The first, which included religious people, judging by the rhetoric and the nature of their own content, supported the authorities’ decision. They even demanded a harsher punishment for the girl. The other group, including civil society activists, said that in a democracy you cannot be arrested and imprisoned for expressing an opinion, even if it contains profanity.
The press service of the metropolitan police department said the aim was to “raise citizens’ awareness and manner of using social media and to preserve national culture and identity”.
Tajik media expert Abdumalik Kadyrov believes authorities are pursuing several goals.
“The first one is to increase control over public opinion, or rather over those who can shape public opinion. The second is to pretend that the authorities are working, although their main task is not to educate bloggers,” says Kadyrov.
He notes that the authorities have gone so far as to regulate public opinion that they are not knowledgeable about what they are doing.
Apart from the general wording “video of a sexual nature” and “use of foul language and abusive language”, law enforcement authorities do not indicate on the basis of which specific legal provisions the bloggers were punished. Nor do the bloggers themselves say anything about this following their release.
Abdumalik Kadyrov believes the problem is that moral norms are too vague a category. Such uncertainty, according to analysts, allows the authorities to punish anyone for allegedly inhumane words.
“The authorities thus draw a certain line and think they can judge the behaviour of citizens accordingly. The behaviour of our bloggers is not illegal. However, our authorities use as a pretext every rude word, which in itself is not forbidden by law, to create new cases out of thin air,” says Kadyrov.
According to Tajik journalist Yokub Khalimov, the main problem is that most social media users supported these efforts by the authorities, which has led to increasing pressure on bloggers and social media activists.
“Not everyone who gets punished is a blogger. There are also ordinary users who occasionally post videos or write something on social networks. Now they are punishing ordinary social media users for immorality and disorderly conduct,” Khalimov added.
According to him, the result could be permanent arrests of active social media users for 5-10 days on various pretexts.
The Dushanbe police also said, “this law enforcement action, which citizens supported, will continue in the future”. However, experts say it leads to a restriction of human rights and freedoms.
Expert Abdumalik Kadyrov believes the arrest of bloggers leads to a restriction of people’s rights and an increase in unlawful convictions.
“The result will be that without the authorities’ consent, you will no longer be entitled to anything. You won’t even be able to exercise the rights that are enumerated for you in the Constitution. Consequently, we will end up in a police state,” Kadyrov stressed.