Persecution and harassment of human rights defenders continues in Uzbekistan
Following the human rights activist Mubinabonu Aliyeva, who was beaten in Andijan, the activist Tatyana Dovlatova was attacked by her neighbors.
Human rights activist Tatyana Dovlatova systematically faces threats, insults and slander against her, including from her neighbors. On May 15, she wrote a statement to the police department of Yakkasaray district of Tashkent, but law enforcement authorities ignored her appeal. In response to this, the human rights activist’s neighbors accused her of intentionally damaging the wheel of their car, for the investigation of which the next day, the local police officer Ravshan Jalilov quickly arrived with an assistant and a representative of the National Guard.
In the presence of three representatives of the law, car’s owners continued to sling mud at T. Dovlatova, accusing her of prostitution and other “sins,” mentioning that she wasn’t a representative of the titular ethnic group.
“Everyone enjoyed the insults and humiliations,” said the human rights activist. “The guys in uniform are almost half younger than me and they didn’t stop this stream of dirt. I declare responsibly that the practice of persecuting civil activists of Uzbekistan continues successfully under Shavkat Mirziyoev.”
As a result, the protocol on the incident wasn’t written, no one was interested in finding out the reasons for the damage to the wheel.
In her commentary to ACCA, Tatyana Dovlatova confidently emphasized that the head of the Department of Internal Affairs of Yakkasaray district, Farrukh Khaidarov, found a reason for the attack. In recent years, Dovlatova has been defending the rights of prisoners and their relatives, which annoys employees of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. The head of the family, who called the detail, is also a police officer in the past.
Dovlatova brought a lot of troubles these days to employees of the district administrations of Tashkent, accusing them of corruption and neglect of the interests of old people and poor families in the distribution of humanitarian aid.
ACCA’s expert believes that such people with an active lifestyle will always be a stick in the throat of the authorities. “Under Karimov, she was beaten while monitoring currency fraud near exchange offices, was tried and so mercilessly fined for combating injustice that she had to sell her apartment to pay off debts,” the expert notes. “Now operatives in the colonies threaten her, and they are trying to discredit her with “wheeled diversion”. In this situation, the evil neighbors have to bear responsibility on several articles. Young Uzbek bloggers were detained for 15 days because of a cheerful appeal to the monument during quarantine, and here a serious offense remains unpunished.”
Tatyana Dovlatova doesn’t intend to leave the provocation without consequences. Her application to the police department was ignored, and now she is awaiting a response from the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the Ombudsman, the State Security Service and the General Prosecutor’s office.
Earlier, ACCA wrote about a similar case in Ferghana Valley. Human rights activist Mubinabonu Aliyeva from Andijan Regional branch of the Committee for the Protection of Personal Rights of Uzbekistan was beaten. As a result, she received a grave brain concussion.
