Rukhshona Hakimova, a prize-winning freelance journalist who wrote predominantly on social and economic issues, has been serving an eight-year prison sentence since February 2025 on treason charges.
With the jailing of Hakimova, who contributed analytical and fact-checking articles to highly regarded platforms including the Institute for War and Peace Reporting’s Central Asia project CABAR and Factcheck.tj, nine journalists have now been sentenced to lengthy prison terms in Tajikistan since 2022.
According to the United Nation’s Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights defenders, Mary Lawlor, Tajik authorities detained Hakimova twice in July 2024 without a warrant and did not inform her of the charges against her for several months. Her case was first reported in late November when charges against her were read out at trial. Radio Ozodi, the local service of U.S. Congress-funded broadcaster Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, reported that prosecutors had charged Hakimova as part of a case against several Tajik opposition politicians, including the journalist’s uncle, Shokirjon Hakimov, deputy head of the Social Democratic Party of Tajikistan, over an alleged plot to overthrow the government.
Hakimova was placed under house arrest pending trial in order to care for her young children.
Authorities classified the case against Hakimova and the other defendants as secret and no official information about the allegations against her was made public.
Radio Ozodi cited an anonymous source close to the investigation as saying that Hakimova had been charged in connection with a survey she conducted on the influence of China in Tajikistan; her uncle and another politician charged in the case had been respondents to the survey. Peter Leonard, a British journalist specializing on Central Asia, reported that Hakimova conducted the survey for a now-shuttered Kyrgyzstan-based research agency, Central Asia Barometer, saying her prosecution showed how asking questions about neighboring China was “off-limits” in Tajikistan.
According to Radio Ozodi, Hakimova’s closed-door trial began in November 2024. On February 5, the court sentenced the journalist to eight years in prison. Authorities also confiscated the journalist’s bank account, reportedly containing 230,000 somoni (US$24,700).
Two prominent exiled journalists from Tajikistan, who spoke on condition of anonymity, fearing reprisal, told CPJ they believe authorities targeted Hakimova not only for the survey on China and her relation to her uncle, but also as one of a small number of journalists who were prepared to write critical articles amid a crackdown on independent reporting.
In a closed-doors appeals hearing held in a detention center on April 2, a court upheld Hakimova’s sentence. CPJ was unable to establish if she had appealed her sentence further as of August 2025.
CPJ emailed the Office of the Prosecutor General of Tajikistan for comment in September 2025, but did not receive a reply.