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This woman is no less beautiful than world known movie stars. It's just that she was not born in Italy, France or the USA. Her inner spiritual beauty is even stronger. In her homeland she is known as a humble person, ready to help anyone who is in trouble.

Free journalist Ulfathonym! The UN Convention prohibits using the evidence given  under torture!

She was born in the Pamirs, on the Roof of the World among majestic peaks covered with eternal snows.

She is a mother of three children and a grandmother to  several grandkids. She is one of those women, peacekeepers, who throw a white handkerchief between the warring parties, and they meekly retreat. But apparently she was unlucky in her homeland, unable to help people she always defended.

Her name is Ulfathonim Mamadshoeva, or shortly among the folks - Ulfat.

Today she is being tortured in the basements of the  Tajikistan State Committee for National Security. She is accused of organizing a rally on May 16, 2022 in the city of Khorog in Gorno-Badakhshan Autonomous Region of Tajikistan, in the Pamirs. They say she invoked the public to overthrow the state power, which she did not do.

On May 18, 2022, she was illegally seized and after six days of torture forced to incriminate herself. On May 19, she was accused under part 2 of article 307 of the Criminal Code of the Republic of Tajikistan (Public calls for a forced  change of the constitutional order of Tajikistan). 

Now she may be  imprisoned for a term of eight to fifteen years!

Why is “the legal democratic” regime of #Emomali_Rahmon, who has been President of Tajikistan for 30 years, afraid of this free and brave woman? Why do they want to hide her behind bars, to hide her  voice from society? 

Her assumed guilt and in fact - danger to the powerful irremovable authorities -  is that having no power or money she won the trust and love of people. She greatly offended the “democratic” government of Emomali Rahmon and his overly diligent head of the State Committee for National Security, Saimumin Yatimov, because a woman journalist in Tajikistan is presumed to be silent.

Perhaps the real point is that the people indigenous to the Pamirs - Badakhshan, which borders China, oppose treason and are seriously concerned about the loss of territorial integrity and sovereignty of Tajikistan, because Emomali Rahmon and his family greatly profiteer from illegal foreign trade and economic relations.

Recently  Ulfathonim Mamadshoeva was interviewed by the journalists of the Tajik service of the “Radio Liberty” and the “Current Time” about the atrocities in the Pamirs against civilians, unpunished murders of citizens by special forces,protected by the authorities, about discrimination acts against the indigenous inhabitants of the Pamirs, about the fair and legitimate demands of the Pamir national minority to the central authorities to respect human rights and observe the Constitution of Tajikistan.

But no matter what Ulfathonim said in these interviews, the subscribers never watched them, because the journalists of Radio Liberty and Current Time, upon leaving her house, were attacked by armed security officers and their equipment was confiscated.

When on May 16, 2022, several hundred people took to the streets of Khorog demanding the resignation of the head of the regional administration, Ulfat was hundreds of kilometers away, in Dushanbe. The rally in Khorog demanded that the authorities investigate extrajudicial executions of civil activists in the Badakhshan Autonomy. More shots were fired in response. There were dead and wounded.

There is no cable or  Internet connection between the capital of Tajikistan and Khorog, since the Tajik authorities have been keeping the Pamirs in an information blockade for more than six months. The authorities do not explain where and how a journalist from Dushanbe could lead a rally in Khorog and make appeals there in the absence of communication.

The only place where she could make the so-called "public appeals" is her Facebook profile. But anyone is able to see that there are no calls there. The public is not aware of the public appeals of the journalist. Can authorities prove the actual public appeals or were they invented by someone beforehand?

In none of the media that Ulfat corresponded with, there are any appeals whatsoever. On the contrary, this is what she managed to say to “Fergana”:

- “This accusation is completely absurd. If I had been trying to organize something, I would have done it better. That's the kind of person I am. I was recently in the Pamirs, but I arrived in Dushanbe for more than a week and did not even imagine that something would happen there. On the contrary, when I was in Khorog, I noticed a decrease in civic activity. And then overnight came an uprising. I think this happened because Chorshanbe Chorshanbiev was unfairly sentenced,” Mamadshoeva told to “Ferghana” on May 17 on the eve of her arrest.

After 6 days of interrogation, on the evening of May 24, the state television channel "Tajikistan" launched a hastily tailored documentary film "Shikasti fitna" ("Failure of the conspiracy"), with Ulfathonim Mamadshoeva, exhausted beyond recognition, with signs of torture in the region of her right eye, stammeringly read a readymade text from the teleprompter. Rough montage and intonation jumps also make it doubtful that the arrested woman said exactly what was compiled and shown as a result.

Tajik journalist, former BBC correspondent in Dushanbe Anora Sarkorova considers Mamadshoeva’s accusations of organizing anti-government actions “not just nonsense, but a deliberate lie”:

- “All those who are still in shock from watching a propaganda film (...) should understand that the special services have many tools to obtain the confessions they need. In addition to torture and physical torture of detainees, security forces blackmail detainees with the lives of their children and relatives. For this reason, one should not be surprised that absolutely innocent people begin to slander themselves and agree to voice the texts prepared in advance by the State Committee for National Security and the Ministry of Internal Affairs.”

The journalist said that during one of the latest “preventive conversations”, an employee of the State Committee for National Security of Tajikistan threatened her with the rape of her young daughters.

-“Therefore, I am personally not surprised why the well-known human rights activist and journalist Ulfathonim Mamadshoeva and the general of the border troops of the State Committee for National Security of Tajikistan Kholbash Kholbashov slandered themselves and confessed to something that they never did and could not do. Blackmailing by the lives of relatives and friends is the most effective way to put pressure on detainees,” says Sarkorova.

In the film, shot by the Tajik special services, an independent journalist is accused of serious crimes that do not exist not only in the civilized world, but also in the Criminal Code of Tajikistan: in receiving royalties, grants and contacts with foreign diplomats. She was also forced to repent for the deaths of young people whom she did not kill.

All these actions of the State Committee for National Security of the country are illegall and immoral. They have nothing to do with legality, but on the contrary, they grossly violate the foundations of the constitutional order of Tajikistan.

Therefore, we, citizens of Tajikistan and other countries, journalists and human rights activists, people of good will throughout the civilized world, demand that the Tajik authorities immediately release the journalist Ulfathonim Mamadshoeva due to the fact that her arrest is illegal and contradicts, first of all, the Constitution of Tajikistan, which

1) Guarantees the protection of the rights and freedoms of the citizen, Article 5;

2) Guarantees freedom of speech and opinion, Articles 8, 10, 14, 17, 30;

3) Guarantees the presumption of innocence: “No one is considered guilty of a crime until the court verdict obtains legal force”, Article 20.

We also note that the Tajik special services grossly violated the provisions of the UN Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, On the Prevention of Obtaining Confessions Under the Influence of Torture.

We call on international journalistic and human rights organizations, diplomats, influential international structures to make all the necessary efforts and exert all possible influence on the authorities of Tajikistan for the immediate release of the slandered civil activist and journalist Ulfathonim Mamadshoeva!

Temur Varki, journalist

Anor Sarkorova, journalist

Rustam Joni, journalist

Zafar Sufi, journalist

Oleg Panfilov, journalist

Alexander Dementiev, freelance journalist

Arkadiy Dubnov, politolog