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Tajik authorities ask media to refrain from promoting Islamic Renaissance Party

There is documentary evidence that one of the aims of the Islamic Renaissance Party of Tajikistan was the overthrow of the constitutional system, he added
Foreign Minister of Tajikistan Sirodjiddin Aslov Zurab Javakhadze/TASS, archive
Foreign Minister of Tajikistan Sirodjiddin Aslov
© Zurab Javakhadze/TASS, archive

DUSHANBE, October 31. /TASS/. Tajikistan’s Foreign Ministry on Friday asked all foreign mass media to refrain from propaganda in favour of the Islamic Renaissance Party of Tajikistan and promotion of its ideas, because the organization is outlawed in the country as terrorist and extremist.

"There is documentary evidence that one of the aims of the Islamic Renaissance Party of Tajikistan was the overthrow of the constitutional system, violation of the sovereignty, territorial integrity and state security of the Republic of Tajikistan," the Foreign Ministry’s information department said in a statement.

As follows from the document, the Supreme Court of Tajikistan on September 29 made a decision "to declare the Islamic Renaissance party of Tajikistan as a terrorist and extremist organization, terminated its activity and eliminated it as a legal entity."

The Tajik Foreign Ministry asked all foreign mass media accredited in Tajikistan "to refrain from the import, dissemination and copying of the party’s audio-, video-, and other products."

The office of Tajikistan’s prosecutor-general at the end of September accused the Islamic Renaissance Party of Tajikistan of complicity in the armed rebellion, staged by former deputy defence minister Abdukhalim Nazarzoda, who together with his associates was accused of a government coup attempt.

All of the party’s top figures were arrested.

Its leader, Mukhiddin Kabiri, is in self-imposed exile in the West.

The Islamic Renaissance Party of Tajikistan in 1999 through 2014 was one of the two main political forces in the country. Last March the Islamists failed to clear the 5% qualification hurdle. Its leader left the country, while the party itself, as independent Tajik experts claim, came under "unprecedented pressures" by the authorities.