Uzbekistan: practice of torture contradicts the words of the Ombudsman
Ombudsman of Oliy Majlis [the Senate] Ulugbek Muhammadiev gave an interview to the online media Daryo.uz, responding to the New Year’s message of the President Shavkat Mirziyoev. In his message, the country’s leader drew attention to torture in prisons. The Ombudsman noted that the issue of violence has been a stigma for Uzbekistan for many years.
In the bureaucratic rhetoric about democratic reforms, he nevertheless admitted that he learned about torture “through the media” and that even “the question of submitting a report to the Parliament has been raised”. Muhammadiev said that he would not allow “the resumption of torture in the prisons of Uzbekistan”.
ACCA has repeatedly raised the issue of torture in its publications. The Ombudsman ignores the information about torture and simply replies to the complainants that the facts were not confirmed. And his assistant, Saidbek Azimov, is so angry with the relatives of the prisoners, who demand justice, that he called one of them an obscene word meaning a prostitute.
The Ombudsman’s assistant didn’t like the story of Surayo Khodjaeva about the systematic torture of her son Amirbek Khodjaev in the penal colony No. 11 (Navoi region). They took his clothes off and beat him. A particularly sophisticated torture was the so-called “butterfly”, when hands were brought behind the back through the neck and shoulder blade, then fixed with handcuffs. According to the testimony of relatives, “they especially committed atrocities during uraza [fast period], forcibly pushing food into their mouths, thus trying to prevent the prisoners from keeping the fast. In the same way, Khadicha Sayfutdinova’s husband was mocked in the penal colony No. 11.
On September 28, the penal colony No. 11 was visited by the Ombudsman’s Commission, during which the administration hid the prisoners. “My husband has been in prison for two years and has been unsuccessfully seeking a meeting with representatives of the Ombudsman at the penal colony No. 7. However, in their responses, they wrote that during the conversation with him, which was not, and the inspection of the work of the colony, violations of rights were not revealed,” Gulbahor Karimbekova told the ACCA journalist.
Human rights defenders seek the right to participate in monitoring the rights of prisoners. The presence of independent observers in the verification procedures is undesirable for the leadership of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, because massive violations of prisoners’ rights will be exposed.
Physical violence against detainees is also described in the Uzbek media. In December, defendants in the case in Sokh (Uzbek exclave in Kyrgyzstan) said that they were beaten during the investigation by police officers, and there was no reaction from the Ombudsman.
