AKIPRESS.COM - Tajikistan is an authoritarian state dominated politically by President Emomali Rahmon and his supporters, said the 2016 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices released by the U.S. State Department on March 3.

According to the report, the constitution provides for a multiparty political system, but the government has historically obstructed political pluralism and continued to do so during the year. A constitutional amendment approved in a national referendum on May 22 outlawed non-secular political parties and removed any limitation on President Rahmon’s terms in office as the “Leader of the Nation,” allowing him to further solidify his rule.

"Civilian authorities only partially maintained effective control over security forces. Officials in the security services and elsewhere in the government acted with impunity.

The most significant human rights problems included citizens’ inability to change their government through free and fair elections; torture and abuse of detainees and other persons by security forces; repression, increased harassment, and incarceration of civil society and political activists; and restrictions on freedoms of expression, media, and the free flow of information, including through the repeated blockage of several independent news and social networking websites.

Other human rights problems included torture in the military; arbitrary arrest; denial of the right to a fair trial; harsh and life-threatening prison conditions; prohibition of international monitors’ access to prisons; poor religious freedom conditions; violence and discrimination against women; limitations on worker rights; and trafficking in persons, including sex and labor trafficking," said the document.

The U.S. State Department condemns very few prosecutions of government officials for human rights abuses.