Ulfatkhonim Mamadshoeva
Ulfatkhonim Mamadshoeva is a prominent woman human rights defender in the Gorno-Badakhshan region. She is a representative of the indigenous Pamiri minority group and an independent journalist, who has collaborated with prominent independent media outlets, such as “Ferghana”. Ulfatkhonim Mamadshoeva founded an NGO, Nomus vaInsof, where she had focused on children’s and women’s rights.
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.
