Tajikistan: Exiled Opposition Leader Flees Russia, Finds Refuge in Paris

Fearing that Russia would grant Tajikistan's extradition request, Dodojon Atovullo, the exiled editor-in-chief of a Tajik opposition newspaper and the leader of Vatandor movement, has fled to Paris.

In an interview with a EurasiaNet correspondent, Atovullo said he decided to leave Russia after discovering that Tajik security agents had reportedly arrived in Moscow with the intention of taking him into custody. Authorities in Dushanbe had issued a warrant in late September for Atovullo's arrest. The warrant accuses Atovullo of slandering President Imomali Rahmon and carrying out anti-state activities. [For background see the Eurasia Insight archive].

"It's good that I am here now, in Europe, safe and sound," Atovullo said after his arrival in Paris.

Atovullo's escape was facilitated by possession of a German travel document, which he obtained in 2001, when he was granted a German residence permit. Russian authorities made no attempt to prevent him from boarding a Paris-bound flight recently. The fact that a German television crew was there at the airport to record his departure may have helped avert an incident, he suggested.

Deciding to leave Moscow may have been a spur-of-the-moment action, but he revealed that he started thinking about the need to leave quickly when he got word that Tajik officials were mulling whether to renew their efforts to bring him back to Dushanbe. "I pre-planned some appointments with French politicians, diplomats, correspondents and NGOs to discuss Tajikistan's problems," says Atovullo.

France is likely only a transit country for Atovullo. He intends to move soon to Hamburg, where he will wait for the "whirlwind" in Moscow to abate.

Atovullo hopes to return to Moscow in the not-so-distant future. He explained that because Tajiks can travel to Moscow relatively easily, he is able to be more effective as a Tajik opposition activist when operating in the Russian capital.

"My stay in Europe has numerous disadvantages," he said. "First of all, our voices reach Tajikistan later from Europe rather than Russia. Hundreds of thousands of Tajik migrants work in Russia. There are many teachers, doctors, engineers and other professionals among them. These people could constitute the backbone of a [opposition] movement. That's why Dushanbe feared my stay in Russia. There, I could keep in touch with the Tajik diaspora directly."

Atovullo revealed that representatives of the Rahmon administration approached him in 2007 to explore a political deal. "Last year, Rahmon's closest aids negotiated with me almost for six months," he said. "They tried to convince me to return to Tajikistan, to get a portfolio or pocket a huge sum of money in exchange for my silence. After I gave them cold shoulder they resumed my criminal case."

The opposition leader assailed Rahmon's administration saying that if drastic changes aren't made to alleviate the severe social and economic stress that the country is enduring, the country could make a sudden turn toward instability. Rahmon in recent years has stifled mainstream, democratically oriented political opposition groups. That has created the dangerous possibility that a "Tajik Taliban" could emerge to fill a leadership void, Atovullo claimed. "Today our young [people in Tajikistan] have nothing else to do except to attend mosques and listen to populist Mullahs," he said.

He added that Rahmon's efforts to concentrate power in his own hands had thwarted the development of a new generation of leaders that could guide the country's economic development. "This is a lost generation," Atovullo said, referring to 30- and 40-somethings in Tajikistan. "There are some young brainy people among them who could have been our best ministers, MPs and politicians. But nobody knows them. In any dictatorship, people are unaware of their own hidden assets."