Tajikistan, Where Wearing Hijab Is a Crime
Chief of the Interior Ministry’s office in Khujand, the capital of Sughd province, Colonel Emin Jalilov has said that 685 crimes have been reported in the city over the first seven months of this year.
Of this number,643 women wearing hijab are nowregistered with Interior Ministry’s office in Khujand; 513 of them are residents of the city of Khujand.
Ex-Soviet Tajikistan regulary monitors and cracks down on any symbol that is deemed to be in opposition to the state.
In February footage of police arresting two hijab-sporting women quickly gathered traction on the Russian social network Odnoklassniki and YouTube, angering ordinary Tajiks in the majority Muslim country.
Russian citizen Oqil Sharifov was charged with "provocation of enmity based on nationalism, regionalism, and religion” and sentenced on May 26 to a year in prison.
Source: World Bulletin
