{"id":1324,"date":"2014-06-19T12:05:46","date_gmt":"2014-06-19T16:05:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/internetmonitor\/?p=1324"},"modified":"2014-06-23T12:06:40","modified_gmt":"2014-06-23T16:06:40","slug":"a-scholar-not-a-spy-the-detainment-of-alexander-sodiqov","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/internetmonitor\/2014\/06\/19\/a-scholar-not-a-spy-the-detainment-of-alexander-sodiqov\/","title":{"rendered":"A Scholar, not a Spy: The Detainment of Alexander Sodiqov"},"content":{"rendered":"

Khorog<\/a> is a remote and mountainous Tajik town. It\u2019s situated in the country\u2019s volatile Gorno-Badakhshan Autonomous Province<\/a> (GBAO), geographical and political worlds away from Dushanbe, the country\u2019s capital and political epicenter. Khorog has, in recent years, been regarded as as a hotspot for the festering of anti-Dushanbe sentiment. Since July 2012, it has been a site of deadly clashes between the government and opposition forces. Alexander Sodiqov, a Tajik-born PhD candidate in Political Science at the University of Toronto, traveled to Khorog to conduct fieldwork for a project on the role of international actors, states, and civil society in Central Asian conflict management. While there, he met with Alim Sherzamonov<\/a>, an opposition leader based in GBAO, for the purposes of this research. His research would meet an abrupt end on June 16, when Tajikistan\u2019s State Committee for National Security (GKNB) detained Sodiqov, who is also the former Central Asia Editor<\/a> for Global Voices<\/i>.<\/p>\n

\"\"

Sodiqov and his family, via Global Voices Advocacy<\/a>.<\/p><\/div>\n

Though the reasons for his detainment were initially vague, the GKNB soon claimed that Sodiqov was acting on \u201csubversion and espionage.\u201d Sodiqov\u2019s arrest comes amid claims by GKNB officials that foreign spies are enacting \u201ca big geopolitical-ideological game\u201d<\/a>\u00a0to destablize the country. Two days after his detainment, Sodiqov appeared on Khorog local state television reading a forced statement subtly disparaging Sherzamanov. Viewers described him as pale and confused-looking<\/a> in the video. Sodiqov’s arrest coincides with the partial blockage of both YouTube and Twitter in Tajikistan since June 12<\/a>, a move many activists fear is a reaction to public discourse that is critical of President Emomalii Rahmon. The past few years have seen blockages of this nature in spades, from such widely-used social networks as YouTube, Twitter, and VKontakte to independent news agencies and websites. Months ago, in the run-up to the presidential elections, YouTube was blocked after a video of Rakhmon drunkenly dancing at his son\u2019s wedding surfaced online<\/a>.<\/p>\n

“Alexander is an outstanding young Tajik scholar and not any kind of agent of a foreign government” #FreeAlexSodiqov<\/a> http:\/\/t.co\/61wMcWB66l<\/a> \u2014 Advox (@Advox) June 20, 2014<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Many activist organizations have mobilized to advocate for Alex\u2019s release. Some media freedom advocates have launched the #FreeAlexSodiqov Twitter campaign<\/a>\u00a0to raise awareness of his arrest, while such organizations as Freedom House, Human Rights Watch, and Avaaz have begun petitions and released official statements condemning<\/a> the detainment.\u00a0Fellow academics have banded together to form Scholars for Sodiqov<\/a>, insisting that his academic work was anything but politically-motivated espionage.\u00a0A website<\/a>\u00a0has also been launched to advocate for his release.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Alexander Sodiqov, a Tajik-born PhD candidate in Political Science at the University of Toronto, was recently detained by Tajikistan’s State Committee for National Security (GKNB) when he traveled to Khorog, a remote town in a politically unstable region of the country. Sodiqov, the former Central Asia Editor for Global Voices, was in Khorog to conduct fieldwork for a project on the role of international actors, states, and civil society in Central Asian conflict management. Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6386,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[83977,20288],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1324","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-arrests-and-imprisonment","category-tajikistan"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4L9BV-lm","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/internetmonitor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1324","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/internetmonitor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/internetmonitor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/internetmonitor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6386"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/internetmonitor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1324"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/internetmonitor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1324\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1340,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/internetmonitor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1324\/revisions\/1340"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/internetmonitor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1324"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/internetmonitor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1324"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/internetmonitor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1324"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}