Do we like them?

Do we like Emomali Rahmon?

Our score: 2 out of 10. A long run of jailing opponents and policing what women wear, with only some environmental diplomacy and one public criticism of social-media prosecutions to set against it.

The clearest story is the crackdown on the Islamic Renaissance Party. In a speech to parliament he said the events of early September 2015 were planned and financed by the party's leadership, and the party was later banned. Its leaders then went to court, and the Supreme Court handed life sentences to two leading figures while others got long terms. Rights groups said the trial was politically motivated; the government calls the party extremist.

On the harm test, I found nothing sourced in his own words aimed at LGBTQ+ people, and I won't guess. What is on the record is the push against the hijab and other clothing the state calls foreign, which started with a speech from him and now carries fines. Where you land depends on whether you see that as a secular state guarding itself or as the government telling women what to wear. Worth knowing for a family page like ours.

There is a little to set against it. He has pushed glacier protection hard on the world stage, hosting a high-level glacier conference in Dushanbe in 2025, which is real climate diplomacy. He also publicly criticised criminal cases brought over social-media 'likes' in late 2024, which is something, though it's not the same as freeing anyone.

I couldn't open the freshest reporting on him, so there's no 'why now' here, and I'd rather say that than guess. Rights groups such as Human Rights Watch have reported on the jailing of journalists and critics and on pressure on exiles abroad, and those are claims worth checking at the source. On what I could verify, he doesn't pass the nice test.