On January 20, the first court hearing in the case of blogger Miraziz Bazarov was held at the District Court for Criminal Cases of Mirabad (Tashkent region). The process started 40 minutes late, then the court representative told journalists and activists that they wouldn’t be allowed to attend the hearing.
According to a reporter from the online media Hook.report, journalists from several media outlets arrived at the appointed time to cover the process.
First, the journalists’ passports were collected in order to record their data. But later, when the list of journalists was done, an employee came out of the courthouse and told journalists and bloggers that only those who have a negative PCR test with them would be able to enter the hall.
Journalists from UzNews and Repost reported that yesterday they called the press service of the Supreme Court. Nobody told them that a PCR test would be needed to enter the hall.
Participants in the process, representatives of international and human rights organizations entered the building. Journalists didn’t notice that they were required to have a negative test. Everyone who went inside had their mobile phones taken away. One of Repost journalists, who had a negative PCR test on his hands, wasn’t allowed into the building, explaining that the trial had already begun.
In a blitz interview with public figure Timur Karpov after the hearing, the defendant’s lawyer Sergei Mayorov spoke about the judge’s ban on spreading any information about the course of the trial, allegedly in order to avoid pressure on the court, and he categorically disagreed with it.
Before the trial, Mayorov reported that Miraziz Bazarov was charged with additional accusation “against three bloggers”. Miraziz Bazarov himself noted on his Telegram channel that these three bloggers, in his opinion, set their subscribers against him. He also claimed that one of these bloggers published his exact address “with a call to kill him”. According to him, appeals to law enforcement agencies about threats were ignored.
One of the plaintiffs, an employee of the Center for Islamic Civilization, Abror Mukhtor Ali, commented on the course of the hearing as follows, “The trial went well. Four victims demanded an explanation. The victims were asked why they were suffering. I am also a victim, because I was accused of being a terrorist. Almost all women in Uzbekistan were accused of prostitution and adultery. This is a slander against us and our women and people. That is why I considered myself a victim and filed a complaint against him.”
The independent media “Asiaterra” reveals the image of a religious figure by publishing an article that mentions the video with phone numbers and Internet contacts of a certain supporter of the ideas of Hizb-ut-Tahrir, in which Abror argues with oratory that “there will be a caliphate”.
In July 2020, Bazarov first felt interest from the State Security Service when he analyzed the spending of loans received by the government of Uzbekistan from the Asian Development Bank and the World Bank. Bazarov openly advocated the abolition of the article for sodomy in the Criminal Code of Uzbekistan. Already in March 2021, a full-scale persecution of the blogger began, in which not only Internet trolls, but also influential representatives of all branches of Uzbek government took part.
Miraziz Bazarov turned out to be a defendant in cases, before the initiation of which he became a victim of a series of ordered provocations and an attack, as a result of which he received an open leg fracture and was operated on. ACCA wrote about lawyer Mayorov’s detailed presentation of the gist of the presented ads.
Earlier, ACCA reported on the statement of authoritative international organizations. Amnesty International, International Partnership for Human Rights (IPHR), Association for Human Rights in Central Asia (AHRCA), Reporters without Borders (RSF), Freedom House (FH), Freedom now, Norwegian Helsinki Committee (NHC), Foundation “Justice for journalists”, the World Organization against Torture (OMCT) and other well-known human rights organizations came out in support of him, continuing to monitor how the investigation is going.
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