Screws Tighten on Uzbek Rights Activists

Human rights defenders in Uzbekistan are reporting a sudden upsurge in cases of harassment by the security service. 

Since mid-June, increasing numbers of activists across the country have said they have been summoned for questioning, subject to greater surveillance, and in some cases opened threatened.

Yelena Urlaeva, leader of the Human Rights Alliance of Uzbekistan, says that on July 4, a woman burst into her Tashkent and started “screaming and demanding that I stop my activities”.

The same day, two assailants attacked and beat Urlaeva’s husband in the street. They told him he should “take his wife in hand”.

Urlaeva had only just returned from the eastern Andijan province, where she visited refugees injured in the recent clashes in southern Kyrgyzstan.

Some 80,000 refugees, mainly ethnic Uzbeks, crossed from Kyrgyz territory fleeing ethnic bloodshed.

Inside Uzbekistan, local human rights groups did what they could to help the refugees. Although the Uzbek government was mounting a large relief of its own, providing temporary camps and accommodation for the refugees, it seemed to be trying to keep them hermetically sealed off.

“It’s natural that the security service increased its surveillance of human rights activists. It stems from a fear that the events seen in Kyrgyzstan could be repeated in our own country,” said Bahodir Namozov, who heads the Committee for the Release of Prisoners of Conscience. “The law-enforcement agencies were therefore ordered to tighten surveillance and take precautionary measures.”

The crackdown seems to have extended far beyond human rights defenders with an interest in the refugees from Kyrgyzstan.

In early July, Gulshan Karaeva of the Kashkadarya branch of the Human Rights Society, said she was the target of an orchestrated smear campaign.

“They are spreading rumours that I wear hejab [Islamic dress] and instruct women in religion at my house,” said Karaeva. “They are probably in the process of manufacturing a case against me, based around religious activity.”

Karaeva has been repeatedly harassed, with one recent case in February involving a “burglary” that looked more like a pre-planned act of intimidation.

Momir Azimov, a human rights activist from Jizak in central Uzbekistan, says he was forced into signing a pledge “not to commit any further offences”, when security police said they had received a formal complaint about him from a member of public – who later denied any knowledge of a complaint.

“I was forced to sign the paper following threats and blackmail,” said Azimov.

Human rights defenders in Uzbekistan are extremely vulnerable to various kinds of pressure. The groups they belong to enjoy no legal rights, and they are vulnerable to intimidation, supposedly random assaults in the street, and harassment through frequent interrogation. International watchdogs say about 30 Uzbek rights activists have been imprisoned on fabricated charges since 2006.

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