Tajikistan: Exiled Journalist Anora Sarkorova’s Family Questioned Over Her Coverage About Deadly Protests In The Region
Location: Tajikistan, Dushanbe
Date: July 4, 2022
Exiled journalist Anora Sarkorova’s family was briefly detained on June 27 and questioned them about the deadly protests in May she covered in Gorno-Badakhshan. The Coalition For Women In Journalism (CFWIJ) condemns the harassment of Anora’s family. The journalists must be allowed to report freely. These intimidation tactics cannot be accepted.
Early morning on June 27, Tajik Interior Ministry’s Department for Combating Organized Crime officers briefly detained Anora’s 68-year-old mother and her brother and questioned them about her current address and journalistic activities. According to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), Anora was threatened veiledly as her mother was asked to tell her that security officers knew the journalist’s minör children.
Anora’s parents were released after four hours without charges according to the news sources. The journalist has been covering articles about the protests in her native Gorno-Badakhshan region. On May 18, at least 25 people were killed by security forces in Tajikistan, in a protest in the autonomous region of Gorno-Badakhshan, where the Tajik regime targeted the Pamir ethnic minority. Clashes between the Tajik government and the Pamiri have been ongoing for decades. The minority ethnic group has been suffering from human rights abuses, such also discrimination over jobs and housing benefits.
The journalist has recently covered security forces’ violence of the protests in the country’s ethnically and culturally distinct Gorno-Badakhshan Autonomous Region. Anora is among the journalists who cover alleged human rights violations in the region, CPJ reported.
Until 2018, Anora Sarkorova was a correspondent of the BBC’s Russian Service in Tajikistan, and she was deprived of the right to work in Tajikistan for her journalistic activities and neutral coverage of developments, including the events which took place in the region. Currently, Anora is working as a freelance journalist and using her Facebook account as a blogger. According to Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), the journalist said that officials of the State Committee for National Security offered her to cooperate with them, but she refused.
The journalist also assumes that a criminal case was opened against her and she is accused of inciting national, regional, or religious hatred. Earlier, pro-government news outlets spread the news about this legal action on social networks, but the authorities did not officially confirm this case.
Weeks ago Anora's uncle, aunt, and cousin were also questioned for disclosing the journalist's sources. The security officers took some names, and addresses and also threatened her relatives to arrest their children or cause some problems if Anora did not stop reporting.
The Coalition For Women In Journalism condemns the harassment of Anora's family. These intimidation tactics were used against the journalist to reveal her sources and to pressure the journalist's family. We condemn these attempts to silence critical voices. We call authorities to allow journalists to report freely. Journalism is not a crime.
The Coalition For Women In Journalism is a global organization of support for women journalists. The CFWIJ pioneered mentorship for mid-career women journalists across several countries around the world and is the first organization to focus on the status of free press for women journalists. We thoroughly document cases of any form of abuse against women in any part of the globe. Our system of individuals and organizations brings together the experience and mentorship necessary to help female career journalists navigate the industry. Our goal is to help develop a strong mechanism where women journalists can work safely and thrive.
If you have been harassed or abused in any way, and please report the incident by using the following form.