Uzbek Police Accused of Rent-a-Mob Tactics
Monday, 11 August, 2008
Uzbek Police Accused of Rent-a-Mob Tactics
Monday, 11 August, 2008
On August 5, the independent news sites Uznews.net and UzMetronom.com reported that police in the western city of Samarkand had detained two journalists and the head of a local human rights group.
Zohir Hasanzoda, the Samarkand regional correspondent for the Ovozi Tojik newspaper, Pardakul Turakulov, a stringer for the same newspaper, and Kamiljon Ashurov, head of the unregistered Centre for Human Rights Initiatives, were charged with hooliganism, on the grounds of an alleged assault on two women at the Siab market in the city centre.
Ovozi Tojik is the official newspaper for Uzbekistan’s Tajik minority, many of whom live in Samarkand.
The three had visited the market to investigate two cases – one a claim by local people that they were being sold short by the use of unfair weights and measures, the other a complaint by stallholders about plans to rebuild the market. They also met an 80-year-old woman fighting moves to evict her from her house nearby. The authorities want to demolish it and incorporate the land into the market.
Hasanzoda, Turakulov and Ashurov say that after they spoke to the market’s director, they were attacked by a group of 15 women who yelled at and assaulted them. The police arrived and took the journalists and human rights activist to the city police department and brought criminal charges against them, based on complaints from two of the women and on the results of a medical examination.
The police confiscated mobile phones, cameras, notebooks, pens and documents from the three.
All three deny the charges and accused the authorities of using provocateurs as a ruse to target them.
“I think the superficial explanation for this [accusation] is the investigation into cheating and into the rebuilding of the market. The deeper explanation has to do with the professional activity of journalists and human rights activists in Uzbekistan, who are constantly subjected to pressure by the authorities,” said Ashurov.
Observers interviewed by NBCentralAsia see this case as a further example of the tactics used to persecute journalists and civil society activists.
They note that it is common for police to use mobs – particularly of women – to create a fracas and then frame the person they are targeting. Surat Ikramov, head of the Tashkent-based Initiative Group of Independent Human Rights Activists, recalls that similar tactics were used against Elena Urlaeva, Mutabar Tajibaeva, and some other human rights activists.
He said such agents provocateurs are recruited among vulnerable groups over which the police has some hold – prostitutes, female drug-addicts, homeless people with criminal records, and members of the marginalised Luli or Central Asian gypsy community.
According to Ikramov, “Every police department has lists of all the active citizens such as human rights activists and journalists, and there are various methods for dealing with them, including arranging attacks of this kind.”
Observers predict that the authorities will continue to place artificial obstacles in the way of journalists and human rights activists. One media-watcher said it was virtually impossible to conduct a journalistic investigation. The result could be a threat to one’s life or one’s family, and few people would risk that.
The same risk apply to civil rights activist who try to help members of the public or appear in court in someone’s defence. “They are always at risk of being attacked by strangers, and this [incident] can later be turned against them,” said the media-watcher.
(NBCA is an IWPR-funded project to create a multilingual news analysis and comment service for Central Asia, drawing on the expertise of a broad range of political observers across the region. The project ran from August 2006 to September 2007, covering all five regional states. With new funding, the service is resuming, covering only Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan for the moment.)
