Uzbekistan: court fined journalist for preserving historical heritage
On January 18, the City Criminal Court of Samarkand recognized Anastasia Pavlenko as a slanderer and imposed a fine of $530. The Human Rights Society “Ezgulik”, of which the journalist is a member, announced that charges had been brought under four articles of the Administrative Code: 41 (“Insult”), 45 (“Violation of the inviolability of citizens’ homes”), 46 (“Disclosure of information that could cause moral or material damage to a citizen”), 202-2 (“Dissemination of false information”).
According to the first article, the journalist was acquitted. According to the rest, she was found guilty for sincerely striving to save the house of the founder of easel painting in Uzbekistan, Pavel Benkov, from demolition. The plaintiff and owner of the house tried to actually destroy the building for the sake of large-scale construction, but this was prevented by Anastasia’s publications as deputy editor-in-chief of the Samarkand newspaper “Vestnik” [“Herald”] and administrator of the initiative group on the social network “Save Samarkand”. New construction has been suspended.
“Suits in this case lasted a year, and the judges returned the case because Anastasia didn’t know the state language,” says Mirzo Subkhanov, a representative of Ezgulik. “This time, the process went quickly, despite clear violations of the law.”
“Nobody has ever seen such a cynical judging. In court, I was blatantly slandered, insulted, not given any right to defense, rejected all petitions, including the removal of judge Ruziev, and applications, in which I demanded the presence of experts and specialists on the basis of Articles 48 and 54 of the Code of Administrative Procedure,” Anastasia wrote a post on the social network. “They didn’t interview witnesses, and most importantly, they didn’t familiarize me with the case materials in Russian! A complete violation of the Constitution and the Procedural Code! The judge didn’t even leave for a meeting or a break, but immediately read out the decision that had been prepared in advance, and all those present saw it.
On December 27, Ruslan Khairnurov, an associate of the journalist and an activist of the initiative group “Save Samarkand”, was arrested and placed in a pre-trial detention center. He was charged under Article 139 of the Criminal Code – “Slander”. The blogger reposted information that a bribe of $80,000 must be paid to get the position of head physician in a local hospital.
On December 31, the Regional Criminal Court of Samarkand commuted the activist’s preventive measure from detention to house arrest, confirming that “there are no documents in the case file confirming that the accused is hiding from the investigation”. And even such a decision after the appeal was also illegal, which only confirms the ordered nature of the persecution of the activist.
The cases of Pavlenko and Khairnurov are directly related to the work of the group “Save Samarkand”. ACCA previously wrote about an activist investigation into a waste disposal project in Samarkand. Implementation was planned in 2017-2019, supported by the European Union and the French Development Agency. The EU provided a grant of 8 million Euros, and the FDA gave a loan of 23.5 million Euros. The government’s own investment in the project amounted to 5.6 million Euros. To date, the Uzbek side hasn’t fulfilled its obligations in full. What the allocated funds went for is not known for certain. The loan must be repaid in January 2022. Among the few achievements of Uzbek implementers is the arrangement of the range “Marokand obod”. Thanks to the project financed by Europeans, it’s fenced off, and feeding pigs with the garbage of local residents was stopped.
