Award for Human Rights Defender From Uzbekistan

Yelena Urlaeva, this year’s winner of the Swedish government’s Per Anger Prize for human rights, says the award is recognition for the whole of the rights community in her native Uzbekistan.

Urlaeva, who heads the Human Rights Alliance of Uzbekistan. received the prize at a ceremony in Stockholm on November 15.

In a statement, organisers said, "In a menacing environment, she gave voice to freedom of expression and association, unselfishly, by peaceful means and with great personal courage risking her own life and health in the struggle for human rights."

"Urlaeva deserves this prize," Surat Ikramov, the leader of the Initiative Group of Independent Human Rights Defenders of Uzbekistan, said. "The Per Anger Prize is appropriate recognition of the work of a courageous and unselfish woman who is unable to ignore the misfortunes of others."

Every morning, Urlaeva’s small apartment in Tashkent is visited by people seeking advice and help. Some ask her to help them draft a complaint to government agency, others want assistance in preparing documents for court cases, while others still are looking for legal advice.

Among the many she helped is a Tashkent resident who came to her when doctors refused to examine her pregnant daughter, who was still a minor.

"We’d written complaints to various institutions, but all in vain," the woman said. "Then we were advised to go to Yelena Urlaeva, who called the hotlines of the prosecution service, interior ministry, and government, to request permission to stage a protest action… My daughter was then registered with a health centre and a car was even allocated to bring her in for medical examinations."

Muhammadqodir Qoraboev, a leader of the ethnic Uzbeks who fled from Kyrgyzstan in the aftermath of widespread violence in June, said Urlaeva played an invaluable role in securing access to hospitals in Uzbekistan where injured people were being treated. He said he was able to interview and photograph them as a result of her efforts.

"She is a very courageous and honest woman. I am glad there are people like that in Uzbekistan," Qoraboev said. "She helps draw the international community’s attention to our problems."

Urlaeva came to the human rights movement in the late Nineties when she was trying to defend her brother's rights.

In 2001, she was arrested while on her way to a protest, and a court committed her to a psychiatric hospital for compulsory treatment. This Soviet-era abuse was repeated on several occasions and only stopped when the international community raised concerns.

After the Andijan violence of May 2005, which resulted in intensified persecution of human rights defenders, Urlaeva established the Human Rights Alliance of Uzbekistan, which now numbers about 15 members. They monitor trials and stage protests about issues like political prisoners and the use of child labour to pick cotton.

Police make every effort to obstruct this work, often preventing Urlaeva from leaving her home to go to demonstrations.

She has continued her work regardless of fines, harassment and even assault.

On September 16 this year, she was beaten up outside the Kyrgyzstan embassy in Tashkent, where she and colleagues were protesting against the conviction of human rights activist Azimjon Askarov by a Kyrgyz court.

This article was produced as part of IWPR’s News Briefing Central Asia output, funded by the National Endowment for Democracy.