By Kristy Tridhavee
Impunity Watch Senior Desk Officer, Asia
TASHKENT, Uzbekistan – Although Uzbek Human Rights Activist Mutabar Tojibaeva was released from the Tashkent City Prison 6 months ago, she regularly has nightmares of her three year stay in the jail, which included 112 days in solitary confinement.
In 2005 Tojibaeva openly criticized the Uzbek government after the massacre in Andijan. In Andijan the Uzbek government attempted to stop an antigovernment uprising. She condemned the shooting of hundreds of mostly unarmed civilians by government forces. Tojibaeva is the head of the Burning Hearts Club, an unregistered nongovernmental organization (NGO) in the city of Margilan. She has also helped ordinary people seek justice, and she has also monitored trials and published reports on illegal child labor.
Tojibaeva was later arrested and was charged with 17 counts of criminal activity, which included slander, extortion, tax evasion, polluting the environment and membership in an illegal organization – her own unregistered NGO. 4 months after her arrest she was sentenced to eight years in prison.
In 2007, prison authorities placed Tojibaeva in the prison’s psychiatric ward without informing her lawyers. Prison authorities forced Tojibaeva to take daily medication. Her family also told Human Rights Watch (HRW) that she was forced to spend 40 straight days in the ShIZO (punishment cell), causing her health to deteriorate. Tojibaeva was later diagnosed with cancer and on March 18, 2008, had surgery at the Tashkent Oncological Hospital. Soon after Tojibaeva was released for health reasons and must continue to serve a three year suspended sentence.
Recalling her experience in prison, Tojibaeva said, “Those classified as political prisoners, such as practicing Muslims or government critics, face ill-treatment and torture. They are subject to verbal abuse, as well as physical and psychological pressure. Prison workers treat them like animals. They never get proper food. Prison food largely consists of boiled porridge and cabbage soup. Inmates have to wait for hours — sometimes in the snow or rain — outside the prison canteen to get lunch or dinner.”
HRW has honored Tojibaeva with the Martin Ennals Award for Human Rights Defenders. The award is a unique collaboration among 10 of the world’s leading human rights organizations to give protection to human rights defenders worldwide. The chairman of the jury of the Martin Ennals Award, Hans Thoolen, described Tojibaeva as “an exceptionally brave woman in a country where standing up for human rights is a dangerous activity that can lead to imprisonment and death; where human rights defenders often have to choose between prison or exile.”
Presently, Tojibaeva is in Germany receiving medical treatment but does not plan on staying in the country long. Tojibaeva says she will return to Uzbekistan to continue her campaign to improve the human rights situation.
For more information, please see:
Daily Times – Uzbek Activist Jailed for 10 Years – 24 October 2008
Eurasia – Arrests, Beatings, Torture All Party of Job Description for Uzbek Rights Activists – 15 November 2008
Human Rights Watch – Uzbek Human Rights Activist Honored – 15 May 2008
