Uzbekistan - human right abuse

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TWO UZBEK WOMEN ARRESTED FOR BANNED ISLAMIC PARTY MEMBERSHIP
April 13, 2003
According to the Russian Prima news agency, on 5 April the Tashkent police arrested Muqaddas Sanakhonova and Surayo Ashimkhojayeva on a charge of involvement in the Hezb-e Tahrir banned Islamic movement.

According to rights advocate Surat Ikromov, there are serious reasons to fear that the women may be subjected to torture because investigators are making attempts to find out who other members of the group are. The detained women are being kept in a remand centre at the Uzbek capital Tashkent city interior department. The investigation is being conducted by Maj Valijon Bekmatov.

At 0530 local time 0030 gmt on 8 April the Tashkent police detained eight women whose sons or husbands have been convicted of involvement in the Hezb-e Tahrir movement. All of them were going to file complaints to Uzbek parliamentary commissioner for human rights, ombudsman Sayora Rashidova. The deputy head of a district police department, Abdusattor Mardiev, demanded that all women give up their intention to file a complaint. Otherwise, the police said, they and their loved ones would face serious problems. At 1900 local time 1400 gmt all the women were freed.

Source: Muslim Uzbekistan web site in Uzbek

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Journalists protest against 7 year sentence for being critical of Uzbekistan Government

Canadian Journalists for Freedom of _Expression (CJFE) has sent a protest letter to Sodiq Safayev, Ambassador of the Republic of Uzbekistan in Washignton expressing its concern and requesting the Embassy to convey the concerns to the Government of Uzbekistan over the sentencing of Uzbek journalist Gayrat Mehliboyev on Feb 18, 2003 to seven years in prison for belonging to a banned extremist Islamic party.

It is said in the letter that Mehliboyev, a 23-year-old journalist who recently graduated from Tashkent State University, was arrested in June 2002 at the Chorsu market in Tashkent, where the Hizb-ut Tahrir party was organizing a protest. Mehliboyev was accused of being involved in an "attempt to overthrow the constitutional structure of Uzbekistan, spreading prohibited religious literature and the organization of mass gatherings." Mehliboyev admits to being a member of the party but says that he did not participate in the protest at the market.

"CJFE views the case against Gayrat Mehliboyev as an attempt to silence a critical voice and to send a message to Uzbek journalists that freedom of _expression is not tolerated in the country. The verdict follows a pattern of imprisoning journalists in Uzbekistan on charges of religious extremism." said CJFE.

Mehliboyev drew the attention of the authorities after he wrote articles on religious issues for the newspapers "Hurriyyat" and "Mohiyyat". One of his articles was presented as evidence in the case, making it evident that Gayrat Mehliboyev was sentenced not only for his religious beliefs and political opinions but also because of his activities as a journalist.



Source: Cascfen

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29 Dec 2002


Even after becoming a US ally by providing vital military bases following Sept 11 attacks, experts argue that little has changed in the human-rights situation of Uzbekistan. With an ongoing campaign against independent Muslims, widespread torture in prisons, and repression of women, the country remains reclusive and authoritarian.

In an interview with IRIN, Matilda Bogner, the head of Human Rights Watch
(HRW) in Uzbekistan, maintained that with more than 7,000 independent Muslims languishing in prisons, the human rights situation remains abysmal.

She urged the international community to constantly monitor the situation in Uzbekistan and make decisions about any future cooperation with the country on the basis of realistic human rights assessments.

To a question he said that the human rights situation in Uzbekistan is not good. Massive human rights abuses throughout the country involving a whole range of areas.

The area that we have been focusing on in the last few years has been religious persecution, because that's an area where some of the most extreme violations of human rights have been occurring. But it also crosses over into other areas such as procedural rights in the criminal justice system, including torture within the criminal justice system.

Independence of the judiciary here doesn't exist. There are a lot of problems, which helped to lead to torture being very widespread in the country.

Independent Muslims in the country are regularly arrested and put in jail. We estimate, along with other human rights groups - and it's a conservative estimate - that there are around 7,000 people in jails for their religious beliefs in the country.

Political opposition here has been decimated in the early to mid 1990s. The government had a campaign against political opposition, with most opposition leaders either in exile, in jail or not active any more within the country.

"The prison conditions here are atrocious, from material levels, including food that the inmates get, the heating and the lack of adequate basic facilities, leading to illnesses. There is an epidemic of tuberculosis in the prisons along with many other diseases. If you get sentenced to a period in prison here that can actually mean that it is a death penalty, because even if you get sentenced to several years of imprisonment, you can die of the many diseases that you get within the prison," he said.

Torture is also very widespread within the prisons, and particularly focused on religious and political prisoners. There were two deaths in August this year, which provide a very good example of the type of things that go on in the prisons here. Two religious prisoners were tortured to death and were brought back to Tashkent in August for the families to bury. One of the families saw the body and it had signs that showed that he had been immersed in boiling water. He had no finger nails, serious injuries to his head and bruising throughout his body.

It's just one example of the particularly gruesome and harsh treatment that religious and political prisoners are subjected to. However, ordinary prisoners are also subjected to torture. In pre-trial detention, torture is an endemic part of the system. Basically, even somebody who is suspected of a relatively minor criminal charge can be tortured quite seriously in order to gain a confession to be used in evidence here.

To a question, she said, "We did a report on women and domestic violence. Looking in particular at the way that the government has helped to aid the process by which women are kept in dangerous situations, such as the local mohallah (community) committees."

They often will provide no support for a woman who is facing violence in the home, and will encourage or force her back into a violent home situation. They usually put up barriers for the women who want to separate or divorce from husbands who are very violent against them. They also prevent investigation or public interference in that situation.

This year, large numbers of women have been committing suicide, and in this region it is often by burning themselves. It seems that local authorities are not dealing with this issue adequately and that, therefore, can raise human-rights issues.

To another question, she said, this year censorship was officially lifted. However, we have been monitoring media since then and it's clear that the government still has a very strict control over the content of the media.

After censorship - that was pre-publication censorship - all the heads of the media organisations were called to Tashkent two days after the ban was lifted. There they were told that they were now responsible to ensure that the contents of their publications remain as they were before. If articles were being published which weren't in line with the government requirements, the editors would have to answer for that. Similar meetings were held in all the regions of Uzbekistan.

"I know of one case in which an editor allowed some articles to be published in his paper which were discussing social issues in a way that hadn't been discussed quite so openly before. It was talking about unemployment, poverty, admitting that there were problems in those areas. He was called in by the presidential administration and dressed down to ensure that it didn't happen again.

It's very clear that media output is tightly controlled. If you rate the types of articles that are published, the types of things on television, it's very clear that it's pro-government and there is very little criticism or even very little debate about public policy and about issues that affect society at large.

In Uzbekistan, the people that are imprisoned are not terrorists. They are not people who promote violence. They are people who have their own Muslim beliefs and who want to express them in their own way. However, they don't believe in violence.

In the past, there had been the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan and they were based outside of the country, and there were a couple of incursions in 1999 into Kyrgyzstan and in 2000 into Uzbekistan. However, it seems that the movement no longer poses any threat since the US went into Afghanistan [in 2001]. Most of its leaders were either killed or escaped elsewhere.

The 7,000 prisoners are either, as the government labels them Wahhabis or Hizb ut-Tahrir [Liberation Party]. There are a few other groups who, for example, follow Nursy, a Turkish Muslim scholar from last century into this century.

The US has been arguing that there has been a decrease in the number of new arrests. They have been arguing that there are some positive steps taken by the Uzbek government. It's true that there have been some steps taken by the Uzbek government that HRW has welcomed. There were two trials of law-enforcement agents for torturing to death independent Muslims in custody. They did register one independent human-rights organisation. There have been a few other steps taken, such as lifting the pre-publication censorship.

She said "I think the international community must not accept that at face value and continue to examine what is going on in this country. They should make decisions about their future cooperation with Uzbekistan based on that real assessment. Other interests in security in the region shouldn't take priority over human rights in the region. Human rights should be at the top [together] with regional stability and not be overlooked."

Source: NNI