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15 minutes wrote that today is probably the most protected Lithuania receives requests from Tajikistan, located in Central Asia. Until 2014, there were up to 5 Tajik applications to live in Lithuania per year, but last year their number increased to 217.
Therefore, we met with Muloidii Mirzoolimzoda, 30, a Tajik who lives in Lithuania and was granted refugee status, to discuss why Tajik citizens seek asylum in Lithuania.
Although Muloidii’s life and journey to Lithuania were tense, he begins to tell his story slowly and very quietly. Because here you finally feel safe. It is only at the beginning of the conversation that he says, “If this interview were to take place in my country now, we would probably be arrested or killed.”
Born enemy of the state
Mulloidi was born a year before Tajikistan became independent (1991). When he had one, after the country was territorially liberated from the Soviet Union, a civil war broke out in the young state for six years.
Beatričė Bankauskaitė / 15min photo / Muloidii
During the war, the communist leader was ousted and Emomal Rahmon, who is still in office, became president of the country. With the help of the armed forces, he sought to remove Islamists and Democratic rebels from power with Russian intervention, and finally established himself in power after the end of the civil war.
At that time, Muloidii’s father, Mirzoolim Kholov, was already involved in the activities of the wanted Islamist opposition party. Therefore, the child’s childhood was not similar to that of other children. When Muloidii was nine years old, security forces invaded his house at dawn and raided the entire house in search of something.
“That night, they took my father outside, they put him in the car, my mother and my brothers stayed at home, and I ran to the car after my father,” she recalls. When security guards arrived at the house and gathered people for questioning, the soldiers fired bullets into the air so that no one resisted and the strangers went home.
When the civil war ended, living for a time became more peaceful, says Muloidii. But the economic situation, the educational and cultural situation remained just as poor, and perhaps even worse.
The unrest returned to the country in 2010, when the President’s Popular Democratic Party of Tajikistan won the majority in parliament, albeit with internationally registered vote purchases.
Reuters / Scanpix photo / Emomal Rachmon
Eventually, the main oppositional force to the rulers became the Tajikistan Islamic Renaissance Party, to which Muloidii’s father belonged. The rulers realized that this party prevented them from fully establishing themselves in power. Therefore, under the guise of an incident with the police, in 2015 the party was declared a terrorist and all activities were prohibited.
Immediately afterward, members of the Islamic Renaissance Party or its supporters began to be persecuted and others imprisoned. “Actually, all opponents were killed or jailed before they left,” says the man.
Reuters / Photo by Scanpix / Military Tajik
Without exception and the father of Muloidii. In September 2015, he, along with 12 other people, was planted behind bars and is still in prison.
But Mulloidi was no longer at the time, since he, encouraged by his father, went to Iran to study political science. Then he says he still doesn’t quite know why he can’t stay in his city and study medicine. The perception came later.
In reality, all opponents were killed or imprisoned until they left.
“Now I understand why he didn’t want me to study at home, but it was very difficult not to object to that decision,” he recalls. “It was only when my father sent me to study abroad, when I was in Turkey, Iran, Kazakhstan, traveling abroad, interested, interacting with people, that I fully understood how wrong I was there.”
A fateful hour in Iran
After beginning their studies at 19 and graduating with a degree in political science from the University of Iran, Muloidii decided to follow them for a master’s degree.
While still studying, the boy was an employee of the Tajik Embassy in Iran, where he worked as a Tajikistan coordinator for incoming students. The work was not easy, says Muloidii, but it was pleasant. There he says that he has already made friends and has maintained a particularly good relationship with the consul.
“He was very close, like an older brother,” Muloidii looked at that moment.
However, as political tensions in Tajikistan increased, its repercussions also reached a neighboring country. One day in 2015, Muloidii received a call from the consul, an invitation to speak. As soon as he left, he realized that the Consul was not sober and certainly not in a good mood.
“Suddenly he got up drunk and started hitting me, I tried to calm him down, put him in his place, I asked him what happened. He said, “I have learned that you are our enemy.” And suddenly, during that hour, the behavior of all the embassy staff changed, everything changed, and the embassy told me to go back to Tajikistan, “he says.
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