Qishloq Ovozi (Archive)

Fifty-eight-year-old Yelena Urlaeva is a rare breed these days in Uzbekistan. A campaigner for human rights, she has garnered more international attention in the last few days than she received in the last 15 years because, once again, Uzbek authorities have punished her for trying to document official abuses.

RFE/RL's Carl Schreck has written about her allegation and so have others, including Human Rights Watch.

This latest incident was related to Urlaeva's ongoing documentation of Uzbek authorities' practice of conscripting people to work in cotton fields. But, in the past, she has also staged public demonstrations of support of: people facing charges over alleged membership in religious extremist groups; victims of the deadly May 2005 crackdown in Andijon; detained or harassed opposition figures and their relatives; fellow rights activists; and she even protested outside the Turkmen Embassy in Tashkent against Turkmenistan's presidential election in 2007.

Her activism has cost her dearly, as even a limited look at Uzbek authorities' mistreatment of Urlaeva makes clear.

Her tribulations started in February 2001, when she was a consultant to the Human Rights Society of Uzbekistan. She was arrested on February 19 as she was headed to the Tashkent office of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) and accused of possessing anticonstitutional material. The following is from a UN Commission on Human Rights report:

"The militiamen reportedly demanded that she sign a statement admitting that the material was anticonstitutional. She was allegedly detained for seven hours, during which she was given neither water nor her medication for a heart condition; she was told there would be time enough to take her medicines in prison. She was apparently threatened throughout her detention, and had a pistol, a rubber truncheon and a belt shown to her."

It quickly got much worse, according to the report: "In a joint appeal of 15 March 2001, the Special Representative and the Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions drew the Government's urgent attention to reports that in the night of 8 March 2001, the house of Elena Urlayeva was doused with petrol and set on fire while she and her family were asleep inside."

Psychiatric Treatment

The UN officials' appeal had little effect. On April 6, 2001, Urlaeva was again arrested as she was heading to a human rights meeting. This time she was transferred to a psychiatric hospital, where doctors diagnosed her as schizophrenic. On April 10, the interdistrict court of Mirabad ordered Urlaeva to undergo compulsory psychiatric treatment. She was not notified of the hearing ahead of time.

She was kept in psychiatric custody until June, when she was transferred to a closed psychiatric hospital where no visitors were allowed and where she says she was forced to undergo treatment for neuroleptics that reportedly had a detrimental effect on her health.

She was released in November, but her case on June 5, 2002, was brought before the same Mirabad court, which ordered her to return to the psychiatric hospital. Her appeal against the decision was rejected and she stayed in such custody until January 2003.

She resumed her rights activism, however. She protested the Uzbek government's perceived disproportionate use of force in Andijon in May 2005, when security forces opened fire on demonstrators. She was arrested in August of that year for allegedly distributing political pamphlets. Months later, on October 18, a court ordered her to undergo psychiatric treatment again. Urlaeva was not present and had no legal representation at that hearing.

This time she was released in less than two weeks, but Urlaeva claims she was beaten and abused by officials during her detention.

Not Intimidated

Again, she was not intimidated. In March 2007, she sent an open letter to the UN Committee on Torture alleging the systematic beating of prisoners in detention centers. Urlaeva also continued to stage public protests against the trials of people detained on suspicion of extremism, a charge that has landed thousands of people in Uzbek prisons. International and local rights organizations have criticized many of the convictions at such trials, saying they are based on flimsy evidence, reports of forced confessions obtained through torture, and a general lack of due process during detentions and the trial process.

In December 2008, Urlaeva and other rights activists were fined for picketing outside a government building in Tashkent.

On the morning of April 5, 2009, Urlaeva was attacked as she was leaving her building with her 5-year-old son. Human Rights Watch (HRW) described the incident: "Two young men, dressed in black and wearing sunglasses, kicked and punched her in the head and in the chest. Shouting profanities, they told Urlaeva that she, 'should have left the country long ago,' and demanded to know why she had not left already. One of the assailants took out a knife and made a few cuts in the leather jacket Urlaeva was wearing."

HRW added:

"It's especially reprehensible to attack Urlaeva in front of her small child." On April 22, Urlaeva's son "was attacked by an unknown assailant, who beat him repeatedly in the head with a stick. As a result of the attack, he was diagnosed with a concussion and hospitalized."

Even that did not stop Elena Urlaeva, and she has been detained, arrested, fined, and harassed many times since that attack.

And now this latest incident.

Many countries would surely grant Urlaeva asylum if she requested it, and the Uzbek government might gladly help arrange her departure from the country for good.

But she refuses to leave, even knowing that, if she continues her activities as a rights defender, as I have no doubt she will, Urlaeva will almost certainly be arrested, beaten, and humiliated in the future.

I have described Urlaeva as "the bravest person in Uzbekistan," I think because her life and experience have raised an uncomfortable question in my mind.

I have written about her for years now, for RFE/RL and for Freedom House -- and every time Uzbek authorities mistreat her, I ask myself what I would do in her place.

Unfortunately, and sadly, I don't think I could endure all that Urlaeva has had to contend with. I would take the offer of asylum and I would leave.

So I can only have the deepest admiration for Urlaeva, because she won't.

-- Bruce Pannier

There are many conspicuous ways to fight terrorism and extremism: militarily, financially, ideologically.

In the case of Oral, Kazakhstan, the effort is also theatrical.

The Uralsk Theater is producing a play called Zhannat (Heaven), which deals with the conflict that breaks out in a large family when the oldest son is enticed by "nontraditional Islam."

The play was first staged on May 31, and the local branch of the department for religious affairs had a role in its preparation.

The involvement of the authorities is interesting because it marks a change in government policy. Previously, the government had been blocking access to information about extremist groups like Islamic State (IS), and officials do not speak about the topic in public.

In the Uralsk play, eldest son Suyunish grows a beard, starts performing the Islamic namaz prayer, and makes new friends with a group of young men who share Suyunish's new interests. Suyunish starts to argue with his mother, brothers, and sisters, and he criticizes them for leading "incorrect" lives.

His new associates are portrayed as semiliterate with a superficial knowledge of Islam. The local imam comes to the "confused" young man and explains that Kazakhs are followers of the Hanafi school of Islamic law, not the route that Suyunish's friends are advocating.

The imam quotes a hadith, a teaching of the Prophet Muhammad, that instructs, "Heaven is found at the foot of a mother."

Suyunish's friends eventually turn out to be thieves who steal to help finance the "brothers in faith," Islamic militants who are fighting in Syria.

But Suyunish's mother dies and his new friends are arrested, sending the errant young Muslim into depression from which he emerges only after comprehending his mistakes and repenting.

In the final scene, Suyunish becomes a "normal" Muslim, begs his family's forgiveness, and shaves his beard.

OK, the story might appear a bit obvious and perhaps crude to some.

But remember, authorities in the Caspian coastal city of Atyrau, some 500 kilometers south of Oral, started printing warnings about the dangers of religious extremism on the reverse side of utility bills in late 2013.

Who is more likely to join IS, a dissatisfied theater patron or someone who can't pay their electric and gas bills?

Back in Ural, the head of the local branch of the department for religious affairs, Talgat Nigmetov, said Zhannat is based on actual events.

But Zhannat's director, Mukangali Tomanov, said he could not be so sure. Tomanov added that he didn't think theater should be a vehicle for promoting government policies; but he said that in this one case, he was happy to make an exception.

"This particular problem is a burning issue in our society," Tomanov said.

-- By Bruce Pannier, with contributions by RFE/RL Kazakh Service Director Torokul Doorov