DUSHANBE, December 20, 2011, Asia-Plus  -- Hoji Akbar Turajonzoda has called an intention to hold picketing outside the Tajik Embassy in Moscow to show support for his family a provocation.

“We are utterly opposed to holding of such a picket outside the Tajik Embassy in Moscow and consider that it is a provocation,” Hoji Akbar Turajonzoda told Asia-Plus today.

“Disagreements that arose between us and the Council of Ulamo we will settle in Tajikistan under the country’s legislation,” Turajonzoda noted.

We will recall that Bahrom Hamroyev, who called himself as head of the Society of Political Immigrants from Central Asia in Russia, told Asia-Plus Tuesday morning that a picket regarding a recent conflict between the Turajonzoda family and the Council of Ulamo is taking place outside the Tajik Embassy in Moscow today afternoon.

According to him, the Moscow mayor’s office has given permission for participation of not more that 40 people in the picket from 13:00 to 15:00.  “The picket participants want to submit an appeal addressed to President Emomali Rahmon and raise the issue of political inmates who are being held in Tajik prisons on trumped-up charges of extremism and terrorism,” Hamroyev said.

“The Society of Political Immigrants from Central Asia in Russia is a public association, which now groups more than 70 people, who are Tajiks by birth,” said Hamroyev, “They now live Moscow, St. Petersburg and Yekaterinburg.”       

“After our association announced an intention to conduct an action of protest outside the Embassy of Tajikistan in Moscow, I received several phone calls with demand for cancellation of the picket and they demanded that I should not interfere in domestic affairs of Tajikistan,” Hamroyev said, noting he himself comes from Uzbekistan.