A/HRC/55/51/Add.2 that even praying privately at home continued to be an illegal activity if anyone outside of the immediate family was present. The only public religious activity in which young people may participate are funerals. 48. Most representatives of religious or belief minorities stated that the existing restrictions continued to be burdensome and disproportionate and severely hampered their religious practices. For example, only two Ismaili mosques are permitted in Tajikistan, one in Khorog and the other in the Dushanbe, some 600 km apart, which makes it impossible for many Ismaili Shi’a, who make up only 3 to 4 per cent of the population, to freely practise their faith with other members of their community, as required by article 27 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. Numerous smaller non-Sunni groups also continued to indicate that they were being denied local registration for some of their members. That means that any manifestation of religious beliefs could be deemed illegal at the local level, even though that would seem to be in contradiction with the national registration status of that particular religious group. 49. The discussions held by the Special Rapporteur with various members of civil society confirmed that that state of affairs remained in 2023 and might even have become worse, at least for members of the Ismaili Shi’a minority, because of the violent incidents of 2021 and 2022 in the Kŭhistoni Badakhshon Autonomous Province. Indeed, the fear of repercussions, implicit or expressly admitted, explains the refusal of in-person meetings in Tajikistan with the Special Rapporteur, except for a few individuals. 50. A few religious or belief minorities, particularly smaller, less threatening ones (Jews and Zoroastrians) or long-established communities (Russian Orthodox and Catholic) either did not wish to meet with the Special Rapporteur or indicated having no concerns or experiencing any difficulties. Those were the exceptions, with all others sharing their appraisal that, as religious or belief minorities, they could not practise their beliefs freely because of the numerous restrictions, could not be registered or had difficulty being registered15 and experienced others forms of the denial of their rights. Some groups appeared to be targeted in particular, either because their beliefs might be considered to be threatening (Jehovah’s Witnesses, because of their proselytizing activities and conscientious objection to military service) or because they were perceived as disloyal or as undermining the current regime (the Pamiri, who are mostly Ismaili Shi’a and, at the same time, members of a linguistic and ethnic minority). The Special Rapporteur was informed that newer, less traditional religious communities appear to be less tolerated in Tajikistan. He shares the views of the Human Rights Committee, which concluded that the refusal to reregister an association of Jehovah’s Witnesses and their prosecution because of their objection to military service or their discussion of their beliefs in homes and in public places, including the street, could not be the basis for discriminatory treatment and observed that religions and beliefs should not be discriminated against on the ground that they were newly established or represented religious minorities that might be the subject of hostility on the part of a predominant religious community.16 51. As a general observation, there is a lack of understanding of the obligations of Tajikistan in relation not only to the international legal standards of freedom of religion or belief but also to the separate rights of persons who belong to religious minorities to practise their faith with other members of their community. When questioned about existing restrictions on the freedom of religion imposed on children and the number of places of worship in which groups of people may hold religious activities or the days on which they may hold them, the response of State officials was simply one of denial and of broad generalizations, such as “freedom of religion is fully respected in Tajikistan.” 15 16 GE.24-00946 Registration must be obtained both nationally and locally for individual religious groups. A religious community may be registered nationally but still find that one local group of its believers is not permitted to register. In the latter case, they may not manifest any form of religious or belief practices, even inside the privacy of their own homes, until and only if they are registered locally. Adyrkhayev et al. v. Tajikistan, paras. 9.6 and 9.7. 11