Uzbekistan: blogger was sent to jail for six and a half years

On May 10, the District Criminal Court of Muzrabat (Surkhandarya region) sentenced the blogger Otabek Sattoriy to 6.6 years in prison.

The blogger was found guilty of committing crimes under articles 139 (“Libel”) and 165 (“Extortion”) of the Criminal Code of the Republic of Uzbekistan. Taking into account articles 57 (“The prescription of a lighter punishment”), 59 (“The prescription of punishment in the commission of several crimes”) and 61 (“The rules for offsetting when adding sentences”) of the Criminal Code.

Earlier, the ACCA wrote that the prosecutor brought charges against Sattoriy in 5 cases and demanded a sentence of 11 years in prison. He demanded to dismiss 3 of 8 charges against the defendant, and to find him guilty on 5 episodes.

In the media sphere, the case of the provincial blogger Sattoriy is considered as a warning. Otabek criticized the local authorities, always emphasizing his patriotism and dissatisfaction with foreign critics of the regime. At the suggestion of the official Tashkent, the local authorities organized a show trial in order to intimidate even the capital’s journalists and bloggers, burdened with self-censorship, whose publications and posts on social networks raise the degree of public discontent with the actions of officials.

“There are still questions about who are the most dangerous enemies in the country,” asked a top blogger Nikita Makarenko. “I think that it’s quite obvious to everyone.”

Nadejda Atayeva (President of the Association for Human Rights in Central Asia) is confident that the case of blogger Otabek Sattoriy has become an indicator of the observance of the right to free expression.

“This blogger provided the public with the facts, but the court and the prosecutor ignored all the petitions of his defense,” said the human rights activist. “Doesn’t this indicate that corrupt officials, with the passive participation of high-ranking officials from Tashkent, are using all the levers of power in an effort to trample the trust of such as blogger Otabek Sattoriy and representatives of his audiences? Now the time has come to arrange a funeral for the judicial reform, which was declared by Shavkat Mirziyoev.”

Blogger Farida Sharif has no doubts that “words are worse than a gun for the government”.

The case of the blogger with a very weak evidence base was so outrageous that Komil Allamzhonov (head of the Public Fund for Support and Development of National Mass Media) nervously reacted to it with a lengthy statement.

“Recently, problems with journalists have become more frequent,” Allamjonov noted. “We also know what problems the press is facing. If we intimidate our journalists to the point that they cannot open their mouths, instead of using and protecting them, they will be replaced by others – those who are hatching a conspiracy from the outside.”