Tributes to Alexander Sodiqov from Toronto, Canada · Global Voices
Chris Rickleton

This post is part of our campaign #FreeAlexSodiqov: GV Author Detained in Tajikistan.
Three weeks to the day since Global Voices author Alexander Sodiqov was arrested in Khorog, Tajikistan, his wife, Musharraf, has seen him only once. Although it has been presumed that Alex — conducting academic research at the time of his arrest — is being tried under article 306 (treason) there has been no public statement to this effect by the Tajik authorities. Alex is an academic, not a spy.
Igor Shoikhedbrod speaks at the event for Alexander Sodiqov. Photo taken from freesodiqov.org, a website set up by Sodiqov's colleagues at the University of Toronto.
Global Voices has been covering, where possible, the academic meetings held in support of Alex Sodiqov. They are here, here, here and here. Overall there were twelve meetings held for Alex. On June 27 there was a meeting held at the University of Toronto in Canada, where Alex is a PhD student and Teaching Assistant. At the beginning of the meeting — now in an embeddable format — Igor Shoikhedbrod, a fellow PhD student at the University of Toronto, issued a moving tribute to Alex, not just as his colleague, but as a friend of the Sodiqov family:
Alex knows so much about Tajikistan’s history its culture and its institutions. And he knows these things not as someone looking from the outside in, but as someone that has experienced those institutions, that history and that culture. Aside from being a rising star in academia Alex is first and foremost a family man. I remember one time asking him how he was on a morning when we had to hand in assignments and he said that he hadn’t slept because he had had to take his wife and his baby daughter Erica to the hospital because she was teething. Alex did not spend that much time in the department because he wanted to spend all the time available with his wife and daughter. One of the reasons Alexander was in Tajikistan [when he was arrested] aside from his scholarly interest in the region, was because like all TAs [Teaching Assistants] his contract ran out in April and he had to provide income for his family over the summer. Last time I spoke with Alex and his family he cooked me authentic Tajik plov and promised to bring me a kazan (cooking pot) as a souvenir from Tajikistan. It is my sincere hope that he can be released without delay and that he can be reunited with his family. We need more scholars on Tajikistan like Alex.
The rest of the meeting can be watched here: