Bozor Sobir

His anti-government poem at that time was cited as one reason for his arrest, in particular of "promoting social discord". His secularist views and criticism of religion continue to stir people in a Muslim-majority Tajikistan and also in Iran and Afghanistan, where Tajik language and culture are practised. The self-identified atheist is viewed by a some as a heretic and an infidel. A member of the Islamic State was arrested for planning Sobir's murder in 2016.

In December 2016, Sobir returned to the US for what was supposed to be a short trip to visit his children and grandchildren. He was hospitalized in April 2018. In a televised announcement, Rahmon ordered the country's US and UN representatives to see that Sobir was visited and "to assist in ensuring his intensive care, comprehensive support and early return of the poet to his homeland." Sobir died on 1 May 2018. Rahmon issued his official condolences, stating:

After the 2015 murder of Farkhunda Malikzada, who was stoned to death over four hours and then incinerated at the center of Kabul, Afghanistan, for allegedly burning a copy of the Koran, Sobir wrote Nowruz became a Worldwide Holiday, but Not a Happy One (Idi Navruz Jahoni Shudu Farkhuna Nashud) about the incident:

In 2013, President of Tajikistan Emomali Rahmon formally invited Sobir to return to Tajikistan. Sobir agreed and was met in Dushanbe Airport by government officials. His arrival and a meeting with the president at the Palace of Nations on 30 May 2013 were televised internationally by MIR24, the channel encompassing all former Soviet bloc countries. During the meeting, Rahmon said: "We have always remembered you and remember, that this is not the first time we had invite you to our Motherland." Rahmon and Sobir also had joint trips and informal conversations in Tajikistan.

In September 2013, Bozor Sobir was granted the order Star of the President 3rd degree.

In 2011, almost all of the country's newspapers, including national, regional and district newspapers carried excerpts from an interview with Sobir. In this, Sobir recommended that the authorities limit the Islamization of Tajikistan and dismantle the Islamic Renaissance Party of Tajikistan (IRPT) – the only Islamic party in Central Asia – stating that if it ever came to power it would reduce the country to a feudal state. This provoked a round-table discussion on the weekly Millat in Dushanbe on 4 March 2011. The IRPT was subsequently banned.

The poet's father was a government tax collector. His mother was a housewife. His younger brother Temur Sobirov was a respected mathematician, with a school and a street named after him in Tajikistan. His second youngest brother, also a mathematician, ran for a Senate seat. The poet's nephew, another mathematician, was the head of a Democratic Party in Tajikistan until his resignation in the 2000s. Another relative was head of the now-banned Islamic Renaissance Party of Tajikistan (IRPT), whose closure Bozor Sobir had advocated. His other siblings went into teaching.

The Tajik authorities said that they presented the pardon of the three opposition leaders as a goodwill gesture to facilitate the resumption of the fifth round of inter-Tajik negotiations. The negotiations had opened in Ashgabat, Turkmenistan, on 30 November 1995, but were suspended on multiple occasions amid persisting differences.

In 1995, Sobir moved his family to the United States, where he worked at the University of Washington in Seattle, Washington, teaching Tajik in the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilization. Sobir had a connection to the university since 1991, when he gave lectures and poetry readings. By 1996, there was a course which studied his work, "Introducing the Tajik Poets Bozor Sobir and Gulrohsar Safiyeva".

Sobir was one of the leaders of the opposition when the civil war erupted. On 26 March 1993, he was arrested at Dushanbe International Airport, where he had reportedly gone to send a parcel to his sons who were studying in Moscow. He was taken to an unmarked vehicle by unidentified people, who were later revealed to be procuracy officials. His arrest took place without a warrant, and it was only three days afterwards that an official warrant was issued.

The trial opened in the Supreme Court of Tajikistan in Dushanbe on 20 September 1993, and proceedings were interrupted multiple times due to threats of violence against the defense lawyers. One of the lawyers, a Russian citizen from St. Petersburg, abandoned the trial and left the country after having been threatened. Dr Ayniddin Sadykov, a neurosurgeon and member of the Democratic Party, disappeared after being detained by armed men in Dushanbe on 21 April 1993. On the morning of his disappearance he had been carrying a medical report on Sobir, intending to present it to the authorities in an attempt to secure his release from prison.

The trial ended on 29 December 1993 when Sobir was found guilty on all three charges. However, Sobir was immediately released. Tajikistan President Emomali Rakhmonov had signed a decree pardoning Democratic Party leaders, ordering their release from jail. Specifically, the decree pardoned party chairman Shodmon Yusupov and his two deputies, poet Bozor Sobir, and Oinihol Bobonazarova. There had been international pressure for Sobir's release. Amnesty International stated that the criminal charges against Sobir were without reasonable foundation. Russian President Boris Yeltsin exerted political pressure after being contacted by the Writers' Union of Russia, who themselves had been contacted by Sobir's wife. Rakhmonov ordered the criminal cases closed and exempted Sobir from his suspended sentence of two years. Sobir had been under arrest for nine months and nine days.

Following his 29 December 1993 release, Sobir was strongly advised to leave the country. He left Tajikistan for Moscow, Russia. The Norwegian Author's Union invited Sobir to attend the Freedom of Expression symposium focusing on seven writers who had been jailed or exiled, including Salman Rushdie and Bozor Sobir.

With the advent of glasnost, Sobir became actively involved in political and cultural movements for an independent national identity. He was one of the founders of the Democratic Party, serving as its deputy leader. The Democratic Party was the secular component of the Democratic-Islamic coalition that governed Tajikistan in 1992, until it was overthrown by pro-communist forces with Russian military support. He was elected a senator in the Supreme Council of Tajikistan, but resigned from this post and remains the only politician to have done so. He also subsequently resigned from the party, reportedly because of a disagreement with the leadership over the growing Islamic elements within the party. A strong proponent of separation of state and religion, Sobir believed religious figures should not engage in politics.

During the Tajikistani Civil War (1992–1997), Sobir wrote poems about the tragedy of the war:

On 5 April, Sobir was changed for attempting to take over the government, hostage-taking, and inciting social discord. An article which was found when investigators searched his house was taken as evidence for inciting social discord. Sobir denied the charges, calling them politically motivated. The hostage-taking charge related to an incident in April 1992 when Sobir, addressing the opposition demonstrators in Dushanbe, criticized a group of parliamentary deputies who were subsequently taken hostage that same day. A group of parliamentary guards sympathetic to the demonstrators had taken sixteen parliamentary deputies and two deputy ministers hostage, holding them until the following morning. The procuracy maintained that this act was a direct consequence of Sobir's comment.

These sentiments amalgamated in the formation of new political parties, such as Rastokhez (transl. Resurrection). This party in particular was focusing on Iran as a political example. Although Sobir was one of the founders of the Democratic Party, he wrote On the Foundation of Resurrection, published in 1991. This poem an open support of opposition and rebellion and is much less acquiescent than Sobir's earlier work.

Sobir established his reputation during the Soviet era. His poems, books, and articles have been published throughout the former Soviet Union and translated into Western languages, as well as Persian, Dari, Uzbek, Slavic languages, and several other languages of the Soviet Republics. His poetry books were also published in Afghanistan and Iran. Sobir's poetic style is known for its imagery, nationalism, patriotism, its inclusion of the history of the Tajik people, and also for its strong political views. Many of his poems have been set to music by various Tajik composers. After his poem We are of Siyovush's Bloodline (Az Khuni Siyovushem) was set to music, it became the de facto Tajikistan national anthem. As a poet, he contributed much to the revival of Tajik national culture after Mikhail Gorbachev's call for perestroika. Many Tajiks know his poems by heart. Sobir is a laureate of a prestigious National Rudaki Poetry Award, Tajikistan's most eminent prize for poetry (1988) and the Star of the President 3rd degree (2013).

Sobir became involved in politics in the 1980s. He was among the founders of the country's pro-democracy movement, and the Democratic Party. In 1990, he was elected as Senator in the Supreme Council of Tajikistan. He later voluntarily resigned his post, and remains the only politician to do so in Tajikistan's history. He resigned from his position as a deputy leader of the party after Islamic elements joined the movement.

In 1979, he began working at the Writers' Union of Tajikistan as a poetry and editorial consultant. At their request, he edited and improved the poems of almost all famous Tajik poets throughout his lifetime, though he worked at the Writers' Union for ten years.

While a majority of his early poems have romantic elements and imagery of his birthplace, from the late 1970s there is a change in direction: themes of Tajik ancestry, their ancient Zoroastrian religion, history, and patriotism. His poems became highly political, including current national and international events, and at times anti-religious.

The first publication of Bozor Sobir's poetry was in 1960, while he was a university student. In 1962, he completed his graduate work in philology and Tajik-Persian literature at the Tajik National University.

Bozor Sobir (20 November 1938 – 1 May 2018) was a preeminent Tajik poet and politician, known as the national poet of Tajikistan and 'the conscience of the nation'.

Bozor Sobir was born on 20 November 1938 in Sufiyen, which is part of the city of Ordzhonikidzobod (now Vahdat District) in Tajikistan. He is the fourth-youngest of seven children. After his father died at an early age, he was sent to study at a boarding school in Hisor in western Tajikistan, about 15 kilometres (9.3 mi) from the capital of Dushanbe. There, he met Turkish poet Nazim Hikmet, who visited the school as a speaker.

The feeling of having been robbed throughout history is prominent in this poem, as is the resentment about the fact that Bukhara and Samarkand, the ancient Iranian cities and the traditional centers of the Tajiks' literature and culture, were in 1929 allotted to Uzbekistan by the foundation of the Soviet Republics. Bukhara and Samarkand feature as lost Tajik treasures, and ancient pre-Islamic Zoroastrian heritage is placed in the foreground (as can be seen by references made to the Shahnameh figures Rostam and Sohrab, the Soghdians). The poem expresses the quest for lost roots.