7 – Emomali Rahmon (Tajikistan 1992 – Present)
It pays to know your place and embrace your role as one of Emomali Rahmon’s legion of sycophants. In 2017, a young history teacher named Saidsho Asrorov made a speech praising Tajikistan’s leader when the dictator visited the Khatlon region. Rahmon was so impressed that he immediately ordered his men to find young Asrorov a wife. It has to be said that Rahmon, who became a leader in 1992, is far less cuddly when dealing with anyone he classifies as a dissident.
Although there was already no doubt as to Rahmon’s dictatorship, the people of Tajikistan voted to allow him to rule indefinitely in a referendum in 2016. It is possible that Rahmon will stand down in 2020 because his son will be eligible to stand in the election that year. Rahmon ensured that the minimum age to become president in the country was lowered to 30. His son will be 33 years old by the time of the next election.
Time will tell if his son will take power and if he does, will he be an even bigger tyrant than his father? That would be quite a feat given Rahmon’s appalling human rights record. Freedom of speech in Tajikistan is so restricted that you could end up in jail for the ‘crime’ of telling a joke. As you can imagine, criticism of the president is strictly forbidden. It is normal for his group of thugs to beat, torture, and electrocute ‘dissidents’ at will. They also enjoy pouring boiling water on their victims.
No one knows how many people have been murdered during Rahmon’s reign, but realistically, it is probably in the thousands. During a crippling food shortage in 2012, he told his starving people to eat less and store more. On another occasion, a YouTube video showed him getting drunk and acting a fool on the karaoke machine, so he banned the platform in Tajikistan. In 2013, he threw a man named Savriddin Dzhurayev in prison for attempting to overthrow the government. The allegations dated back to 1992 when Dzhurayev was just seven years of age.