Qishloq Ovozi (Archive)

There are not many human rights defenders left in Uzbekistan. To put it mildly, the government, having done much that it would prefer remain unpublicized, does not like their activities.

Yet some rights activists remain, undaunted by the threats, beatings, and forced incarcerations of authorities, and they continue to demand that their rights -- and the rights of Uzbekistan’s people -- be respected.

Adelaida Kim of the Rights Defenders Alliance of Uzbekistan (PAU) is one such person. She featured in an earlier Qishloq Ovozi. She was in court then, she was in court again in April, and, as was true in the previous post, she brought a complaint against police.

Kim claims that police Colonel Bakhtiyor Egamberdyev, the head of Tashkent’s department for fighting terrorism, insulted and verbally abused her and after that she faced “fabricated” charges and was ordered to pay hefty fine.

It started when Kim and colleague Lyudmila Brosalina were demonstrating outside the Ukrainian Embassy in Tashkent on May 8, 2014. Kim was demanding an end to hostilities in eastern Ukraine, specifically the “vicious murders of unarmed people...”

There were only the two of them, but Uzbek authorities worry that such acts could mushroom and lead to antigovernment protests, so any picket is dispersed quickly.

Kim was detained -- far from the first time that has happened -- and brought to police headquarters. There, Kim says, Egamberdyev insulted and berated her and told her she should move to Ukraine.

Kim was also charged with an administrative offense and fined 6 million Uzbek som (about $2,400). Kim appealed, and in January the Supreme Court lowered the fine to about 300,000 som ($120).

On April 8, the hearing opened in Kim’s case against Egamberdyev and two other policemen. Bakhtiyor Egamberdyev arrived, except, as Kim pointed out, it was not the right Bakhtiyor Egamberdyev. The person who showed up in the courtroom on April 8 was a deputy district police chief who was also named Bakhtiyor Egamberdyev.

Neither of the two policemen named in Kim’s lawsuit showed up for the trial either. The hearing was adjourned and scheduled to reconvene when the correct Bakhtiyor Egamberdyev was located and summoned.

As of the time of this writing, there have not been any reports that the trial has resumed.

Standing outside the courthouse on April 8 was PAU leader Yelena Urlaeva, holding a sign of support for Kim.

The story of Urlaeva in April was very different than Kim’s ordeal.

But first a bit about Yelena Urlaeva, whom I have called the bravest person in Uzbekistan. She’s helped expose child labor in Uzbekistan’s cotton harvests and given the outside world the names of Uzbeks arrested, hastily tried, and thrown into prison. She’s pointed out the inconsistencies in the authorities’ reasons for trying these people and the violations that occur in the judicial system when they are convicted and sentenced. Without Uraleva’s work, some of these people would have simply vanished -- locked away, out of sight and out of mind, forgotten.

And for more than two decades, she’s paid the price. Urlaeva has been detained many, many times. She's been forcibly committed to psychiatric clinics, ordered by courts to take medications, physically assaulted, and regularly threatened. And she still keeps defending the rights of the people of Uzbekistan.

Given her harsh treatment by the authorities, it was amazing to see that on April 7 Urlaeva sent a letter to Uzbekistan’s interior minister requesting that the head of the department for fighting terrorism in the Mirzo-Ulughbek district of Tashkent, Ilyas Mustafaev, be promoted.

It’s not a joke. Urlaeva is totally sincere.

Mustafaev has been detaining Urlaeva for some 17 years, but in her letter the PAU leader said Mustafaev has always fulfilled his duties honestly -- both as an officer and as a human being.

“I understand Mustafaev," she said. "He’s a soldier and carries out orders."

This story just gets better.

Mustafaev has had to come to Urlaeva’s flat so often that he is now considered a guest and is offered a place to sit and given something to eat and drink, even when he comes with official warnings.

“Ilyas calls my mother ‘mama’ and mama calls him ‘son’,” Urlaeva said. Mustafaev has even shown up at her birthday parties.

Urlaeva recalled that when she was demonstrating in 2010, “someone in civilian clothes” started hitting her and Mustafaev pulled the attacker away and apologized “for his colleague” and took her home.

In her letter recommending Mustafaev be raised in rank, Urlaeva wrote, “This worthy officer is already more than 50 years old and is still a major.” She asked that he be promoted by April 28, which Urlaeva knows is Mustafaev’s birthday.

I haven’t heard if Mustafaev has gotten his promotion or not.

-- Bruce Pannier

My thanks to fergananews.com for the coverage of Kim and Urlaeva

It started during the morning of April 22 at bazaars in the eastern Uzbek cities of Kokand and Margilan. Members of Uzbekistan's National Security Service (SNB) in civilian clothes made their way through the crowds and forced women wearing head scarves to remove them.

The SNB agents did not explain their actions but the motive was obvious and part of a growing belief by governments in Central Asia that Islamic clothing leads to Islamic radicalization.

RFE/RL's Uzbek Service, known locally as Ozodlik, reported on the bazaar raids. The SNB were back on April 23 just to ensure everyone understood this new "hudjum" was policy, not a one-day event.

One woman said she removed hear head scarf when the SNB confronted her, then put it back on after they left, only to be spotted and again asked to take it off. She finally left the Ipak Chilar Bazaar and put her head scarf back on after she was a safe distance away

One person told Ozodlik that the SNB had taken the head scarf from a woman who appeared to be 50 or 60 years old.

The first "hudjum" dates back to 1927 when the Soviet government forced women to stop wearing scarves, veils, or burqas.

Officially the hudjum was meant to liberate women in the conservative areas of Central Asia that became part of the Soviet Union.

Unofficially, authorities in Moscow viewed such clothing as a sign of backward peoples, and the Soviet Union was going forward.

Soviet officials literally ripped the scarves and veils off women in some cases. Some women who went along with the hudjum campaign were killed by their pious menfolk.

The second hudjum happened in 1987 when Rano Abdullaeva, the Uzbek Soviet Republic's secretary for ideology, sent Komsomol members to enforce the hudjum.

Abdullaeva, dubbed "Temir Khotun," (the Iron Lady), also insisted that women should not have head scarves on when they were being photographed or even in paintings.

This latest hudjum campaign is apparently not aimed solely at women. Ozodlik reports that men wearing the traditional "doppi," the black skull cap have also fallen out of favor with the authorities. No one has commented on why this is the case, although it is possibly because the black-and-white color scheme of the doppi is somewhat reminiscent of the flag of the Islamic State militant group.

Fines for those caught wearing the classic doppi go as high as 200,000 som (about $75).

-- Bruce Pannier, with contributions from Barnohon Isakova and Shukrat Babajanov from RFE/RL's Uzbek Service

RFE/RL' Uzbek Services coverage of this story can be found here