Uzbekistan: human rights defenders and activists punished with mental hospital treatment
The Uzbek Forum for Human Rights (Germany) published a report “Punitive Psychiatry in Uzbekistan: Stifling the Voices of Activists” describing the use of forced psychiatric detention to suppress human rights defenders and critics of the regime in the country. The report documented cases in which human rights defenders were forcibly placed in psychiatric institutions in retaliation for their activism.
A German non-governmental organization notes some progress with human rights: the release of some political prisoners, a reduction in the use of forced labor, and the ratification of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. At the same time, the inhuman use of psychiatric confinement continues.
For example, David Bagmanyan was held in the Republican Psychiatric Clinical Hospital in Tashkent from April 23, 2019, to May 23, 2019, because of his protests in defense of his property rights. The procedure for his hospitalization was initiated not by a doctor, but by the local head of the Akhangaran city administration, Odiljon Zhuraev, in an apparent attempt to stop Bagmanyan’s efforts to resist state tyranny.
On June 13, 2019, the civil court of the city of Akhangaran declared Bagmanyan incompetent, having satisfied the claim of the city khokimiyat. The khokimiyat argued that Bagmanyan’s complaints about the demolition of his property were “unfounded statements and slander” and that “Bagmanyan creates irritation and an unhealthy environment in society.” This, apparently, is the basis for the khokimiyat to demand that Bagmanyan be recognized as incompetent and sent for compulsory psychiatric treatment. The decision to hospitalize Bagmanyan was made, although he had never suffered from mental illness in the past and had a certificate from the Akhangaran neuropsychiatric dispensary dated April 11, 2019, confirming the absence of mental illness. However, the conclusion of the psychiatric examination dated May 23, 2019, indicates that Bagmanyan suffers from “a mental illness in the form of paranoid schizophrenia.” On April 13, 2021, Bagmanyan’s application to annul the decision of the civil court to declare him mentally incapacitated was rejected by the Supreme Court of Uzbekistan.
The case with Khudoyar Matyakubov, an activist from the Amu Darya region of Karakalpakstan, is indicative. Before his forced confinement in a psychiatric hospital, Matyakubov criticized the mismanagement of the local authorities. On November 5, 2019, Matyakubov was detained by the district police and forcibly placed in a psychiatric hospital in Nukus, which is 130 km away from his home. There he was kept for 26 days and injected with psychotropic drugs. He was not told the diagnosis or the name of the drugs. The activist notes the unsanitary conditions in the institution, which, moreover, was overcrowded with patients. He was released on December 1, 2019.
After his release, Matyakubov complained about the actual arrest. He was almost immediately detained again and sent back to the same psychiatric facility. This time he was there for 10 days.
In an interview with the Uzbek service of Radio Liberty, these facts were not considered worthy of attention by a member of the parliamentary Committee on the observance of constitutional human rights and freedoms, head of the Ezgulik Human Rights Society, Abdurakhman Tashanov.
“The last case was connected with Ollashukurova. I personally dealt with her case. But such cases have not been observed in Uzbekistan for the last two years, ”Tashanov informed the reporters.
Earlier, ACCA reported about an international campaign for the release of blogger Nafosat Ollashukurova, who was forcibly held in a neuropsychiatric clinic for two months in 2019 for covering protests.
The report of the Uzbek Forum describes in detail other cases of victims of punitive psychiatry – human rights activist Elena Urlaeva, journalists Dilmurod Said and Jamshid Karimov, as well as a farmer Alikul Sarymsakov.
The report summarizes: Uzbekistan has received much praise for its declared commitment to improving the human rights situation. However, examples show that its citizens remain highly vulnerable to arbitrary detention and intimidation. German human rights activists admit that “many more Uzbek citizens censor themselves to avoid the same fate.”
