Khayrullo Mirsaidov
Khayrullo Mirsaidov has been an independent journalist and political analyst for the past 17 years. He has reported for Deutsche Welle, Asia-Plus, and the Fergana media outlets, among others. Khayrullo Mirsaidov has often written about human rights issues, ecological problems, and respect for ethnic minorities. He also worked as a media development trainer on projects sponsored by the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), the Department for International Development (DFID), and the Index on Censorship.
Human rights defenders in Tajikistan work in conditions of long-term unchanged political power and absence of political pluralism. In 2015 the Islamic party of Tajikistan was banned as a terrorist organisation and 20 of its members were arrested. The same year three human rights lawyers who tried to provide legal assistance to the arrested members of the party were arrested on the trumped-up charges of fraud, that had been used previously on many occasions to silence the lawyers and human rights defenders working on sensitive cases.
