Human Rights Developments

Defending Human Rights

The Role of the International Community

Defending Human Rights

In 1998, the government again refused to register the two leading human rights groups in the country, the Human Rights Society of Uzbekistan (HRSU) and the Independent Human Rights Organization of Uzbekistan (IHROU).

On December 21, 1997, three IHROU members, Mikhail Ardzinov, Jamal Mirsaidov and Ergash Kasimov, were stopped by police officers in Samarkand while on their way to a founding meeting of the Tajik National Cultural Center of Samarkand. Police took the men to a precinct station in Samarkand, where they were held for the duration of the scheduled meeting. After several hours, Mr. Ardzinov attempted to leave, but two officers grabbed him and, along with five or six others, beat him repeatedly and threw him to the floor. He and Mirsaidov were then asked to sign a prepared statement against the organizing of unsanctioned meetings and, after refusing to sign, were threatened by procurator Bohadir Sadulaev with fifteen days in prison. Once released, Ardzinov and Mirsaidov left the building to find approximately thirty police officers and men in plain clothes awaiting them. Police returned Mirsaidov to the police station; ten of them surrounded Ardzinov, beat him, and forced him into a police vehicle. He was then forcibly transported to Tashkent by three men in plain clothes, who forced him to keep his head down and taunted him. When police released him, they warned him not to return to Samarkand. Mirsaidov was put under ten days of administrative arrest, but released after three days, when the American Embassy voiced objection. Police held Kasimov for fourteen hours and then released him after he signed a statement verifying he had been warned not to organize unsanctioned meetings.

Members of the Namangan branch of the HRSU reported continual harassment by local authorities. Unidentified men in plain clothes followed the group’s members, and unmarked police cars were regularly parked outside their homes. Family members of arrested men who shared information with the group were called in by local police, questioned, and threatened that their relatives’ sentences would be extended if they continued to speak with human rights activists. In January, members of the group sent a letter to Ombudswoman Sayora Rashidova, chair of the government’s Human Rights Institute, expressing their desire to set up a joint commission to examine human rights violations in the Namangan region. In February, the Namangan procurator questioned the group’s members for hours about the letter and about their sources of information on human rights abuses and events in Namangan. The HRSU members were permitted to leave without divulging their sources.