The Madness of Protesting

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Several leading Russian minority rights activists in Uzbekistan have, say human rights organizations, been forcibly given psychiatric treatment by the Uzbek authorities after a rally to voice complaints by the Russian minority was broken up.

Public protests are rare in Uzbekistan, where there is a strong authoritarian regime and the media is state-controlled. However, the authorities allowed the Human Rights Organization of Uzbekistan to hold a rally on 20 August lasting an entire day. According to the Associated Press, this made it the longest street protest ever held in Uzbekistan.

However, when activists decided to hold another demonstration on 27 August outside the Justice Ministry, the rally was broken up within minutes and, according to witnesses in nearby cafés, at least five activists were bundled into a car with no license plate by men dressed in civilian clothing. Tashkent's deputy police chief, Zukhritdin Babakalanov, said the police had been under orders not to break up peaceful protests and did not deny that the security services may have intervened.

One of the detainees, Olga Krasnova, told researchers at the New York-based Human Rights Watch that she was beaten in custody after she was arrested at the rally, and Human Rights Watch observers reported seeing bruising on her arms, back, and legs. According to the organization, two leading activists, Elena Urlaeva and Larisa Vdovina, were held in a district police station and then transferred to a psychiatric hospital, where medical staff confirmed that both women had been given psychiatric drugs. Urlaeva said she had been given injections and tablets.

This is the second time that Urlaeva, a prominent member of the organization, has been sent to a psychiatric ward. In April 2001, although Urlaeva says her psychiatrists considered her to be mentally healthy, she was locked up in Tashkent's largest mental hospital and remained there until June 2001.

Urlaeva was released in the wake of pressure from international rights groups and diplomats. She subsequently appealed a court verdict requiring her to undergo psychiatric treatment, arguing that the court's decision was political. She lost the appeal in July.

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The demonstrators, all of whom are ethnic Russians, had been demanding a meeting with President Islam Karimov to voice their complaints about the treatment of the country's large Russian minority, which makes up 5.5% of Uzbekistan's population of over 24 million. Russians complain that when they approach the authorities, their requests are routinely ignored or met with the response that they should move to Russia. Tolib Yakubov, the head of the Human Rights Society of Uzbekistan, told Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty that Russians have lost some of the rights they previously enjoyed.

While these demonstrations focused on Russian issues, some of the protestors said the aim of the rally was to promote the rights not only of Russians, but of everyone in Uzbekistan regardless of ethnicity and origin. Among the issues they were protesting against were abuse of police power and corruption.

Yakubov warned that, while fear of the police has meant that ethnic Uzbeks have so far been muted in their complaints, the patience of the majority population could also reach breaking point. He particularly mentioned the recent strikes against tax increases imposed on traders in bazaars as an example of ethnic Uzbeks protesting conditions that they consider to be intolerable.

Since independence, Uzbekistan has been continuously criticized by international human rights organizations for its poor human rights record and its reluctance to carry out democratic reforms. Within the human rights community in Uzbekistan, however, there is a widespread belief that international pressure on the government has eased since Uzbekistan allowed the international anti-terrorist coalition to use its air bases for military and humanitarian operations in neighboring Afghanistan.

After a tour of Central Asia, Elizabeth Jones, the assistant secretary for European and Eurasian affairs at the U.S. State Department, countered allegations that "because we have new military relationships with several of these governments somehow we're giving a bye to human rights and democracy," insisting that "in fact, the opposite is the case" and that Washington is "finding it easier" to push these issues "because we have so much more contact."

*This article was edited and adapted from Transitions Online. A longer version is available at: www.tol.cz

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