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Methodology

This report is based on Human Rights Watch research in Uzbekistan between autumn 2005 and summer 2007, carried out in the course of the day-to-day work of our representative office in Tashkent. It also reflects our experience in monitoring the worsening human rights situation in the country since the establishment of the office in 1996.

The report specifically draws on 32 interviews with torture victims, their relatives, and eye-witnesses. The majority of these people were from the provinces of Jizzakh, Samarkand, and Tashkent. Twelve interviews were conducted in Andijan in summer 2005 (and were part of the information set documented in a September 2005 Human Rights Watch report on the aftermath of the 2005 Andijan uprising and massacre).¹

At three of the ten trials Human Rights Watch observed during the period covered by this report, 15 defendants gave court testimony about ill-treatment and torture. These three trials took place in spring 2006, summer 2006, and summer 2007, in the provinces of Tashkent and Syrdaria.² A Human Rights Watch representative made attempts to monitor two additional trials involving five defendants but was denied access by Uzbek authorities. With regard to one of these trials, we learned from the defendant, nine months later, that he had been tortured, and with regard to the other, we learned through the defendant’s lawyer that he had been tortured.

The report also draws on information from interviews and conversations with a dozen defense lawyers representing clients facing criminal charges and who had been abused in custody. Finally, local human rights defenders from Uzbekistan have brought many cases of torture or other abuse to our attention, although in many of these cases we did not have the capacity to independently investigate them. Those human rights defenders generously shared their—sometimes firsthand—experiences or eyewitness accounts with us. Although each torture victim endures a specific ordeal, this report focuses not on what made them unique but rather on what they had in common. This is not to undervalue the individual cases but to focus on the recurring patterns that add up to a systemic problem.

The report has made use of Uzbek government documents and communication with government officials. The Office of the Prosecutor General and the Office of the Omdudsman each responded in writing to Human Rights Watch letters requesting information.³ As of this writing Human Rights Watch had not received a reply to our July 26, 2007 letter requesting information from the Ministry of Internal Affairs.

Beginning in May 2005, several letters to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs requesting visas for Human Rights Watch headquarters staff remained without reply. In May 2007 Holly Cartner, Europe and Central Asia director at Human Rights Watch received a visa and met in Tashkent with Vladimir Norov, Foreign Minister, Akmal Saidov, Head of the National Centre for Human Rights and Sayora Rashidova, omBudswoman. Officials from the Ministry of Internal Affairs or the Office of the Prosecutor General did not respond to our requests for meetings.

There are considerable risks and other barriers to victims reporting torture, which are documented in this report. This leads Human Rights Watch to believe that many more persons than those whose stories have been investigated by us have been subjected to torture and ill-treatment. In addition, Uzbek and foreign human rights defenders, including Human Rights Watch, have over the past two and a half years been operating in an increasingly oppressive environment that has restricted their ability to monitor the situation of human rights and their accessibility to the Uzbek public. For example, in the case of Human Rights Watch bureaucratic obstacles imposed by the government, between April 2006 and April 2007, limited the research staffing of our Tashkent office to one person and prevented that person from having essential administrative support. Meanwhile, government surveillance made it difficult for us travel widely, in one case causing us to terminate a research trip out of concern for the safety for interviewees.

The identities of most interviewees have been withheld in the interest of protecting them from possible harassment or other threats to their safety in retribution for having spoken to Human Rights Watch. They have been assigned a pseudonym consisting of a randomly chosen first name and a last initial that is the same as the first letter of the first name, e.g., “Alisher A.” There is no continuity of pseudonyms with other Human Rights Watch reports on Uzbekistan; hence an “Alisher A.” cited in the present report is not the same person as an “Alisher A.” cited in any previous Human Rights Watch report. Testimony by defendants at trial has not been made anonymous.

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