Interview with former political prisoner Jora Murodov

The international NGO Human Rights Watch (HRW) has said that more than 15 political prisoners have been tortured to death in Uzbek prisons since 2000. In addition to this, Amnesty International (AI), in its 2002 report on Uzbekistan, said reports of ill-treatment and torture by law enforcement officials of alleged supporters of banned Islamic opposition parties and movements, such as Hizb-ut-Tahrir, continued unabated. Thousands of devout Muslims and dozens of members or supporters of the banned secular political opposition parties and movements 'Erk' and 'Birlik' were serving long prison sentences, convicted after unfair trials of membership of an illegal party, distribution of illegal religious literature and anti-state activities. In a rare insight into prison conditions in Uzbekistan, Jora Murodov, a member of the Human Rights Society of Uzbekistan (HRSU) spoke to IRIN about his recent detention. He noted conditions for those identified as political prisoners in Uzbek jails were worse than for normal inmates and that torture was common place. Muradov, living in the Nishan District of the Kashkadarya province, added that he and two other human rights activists had been jailed for robbery and public order offences, but the sentence was to stop them fighting bribery and corruption among local authorities, he maintained. QUESTION: When were you imprisoned? ANSWER: I was imprisoned on 16 September 2002. After that I was in jail in Karshi [a town 350 km southwest of the capital, Tashkent] prison. Later on 27 October 2002 I was sent to a penitentiary near Shayhali-Korgan village, five km northwest from Karhsi. There we were under the supervision of the Ministry of Interior officers and kept under quarantine for 16 days with my companions Musurmankul Khamraev and Narpolat Rajapov. We've been imprisoned on the charges of hooliganism, robbery, causing damage and threatening someone. Q: You say that you have been charged with robbery and hooliganism, could you explain it in more detail, how did it happen? A: We weren't involved in these crimes. Everything was a lie, there weren't such things; we became witnesses to that occasion [of hooliganism and robbery] involuntarily. We were taken into custody, and an investigator gathered his men, and some of them acted as false witnesses and testified against us. So, based on charges of hooliganism and others articles we were imprisoned. Q: How long was your term? A: I was sentenced to six years of imprisonment. Q: When were you released? A: I was released from prison on 26 August of this year. My companions were released on 15 July 2003. Q: What do you think were the real reasons you were brought to jail? A: Well, we were fighting against human rights abuses, corruption and hardship here in our province. We were working to defend human rights of the [local] people and that's why they put us in jail. Q: What were the conditions in the prison? A: One is supposed to do every dirty job there, cleaning toilets, loading and unloading trucks etc. So, you do everything days and nights. Afterwards I was sent to a brigade [group within the penitentiary institution]. Conditions were bad there; food was bad, cooked out of rotten products. The porridge they used to give us in the mornings was not food that a human being could eat, it was just humiliating. There wasn't clean drinking water there and we couldn't drink the very salty, poisonous water they were giving us - the water extracted from underground wells. In other words living conditions there were very hard. They say on paper that everything is fine, but in reality it is not so. Q: How were you treated in prison? A: It was cold in winter there, but there were not sufficient facilities and conditions. For example, the chief of the prison would announce every day of the week over loudspeakers that he would accept prisoners who wanted to meet him. However, some junior officers were prevented from meeting the head of the prison. On 15 April of this year they took off our winter clothes and left us only in underwear and shirts. We spent cold, rainy and snowy days with only shirts on us. Additionally, there were some punishment rooms, if someone allegedly broke the rules of the prison he would have been kept in those cells for a day, three days, for a week, 10 days and even for three months alone. Q: Were you treated differently? A: We were called 'traitors' and 'provocateurs' there and were treated worse [than other prisoners charged with ordinary crimes]. We were tortured and beaten. They were harassing us verbally, humiliating us and one of the guards called Burhan, beat me with a rubber stick, after taking me to his room. Q: Why did he beat you? A: He was saying 'you are a traitor and a provocateur' and he swore and cursed me, words that I cannot repeat now, claiming that I deserved torture. Q: You say that compared to ordinary convicts, political prisoners are treated badly. A: Yes, that is right. The day I was released the head of the prison Nazarbaev said, 'ah, traitor you are going, how have you been ?' Q: How many political prisoners were there in the prison? A: At the prison where I served my term there were more than 2,000 inmates. Some 30-35 percent of them were Hiz-but Tahrir members. They [Hiz-but Tahrir members] were mostly sentenced for long terms, eight years, and 18 years. There was also the first secretary of the Erk [oppositional] party's Katta-Korgan organisation, 69-year-old Gafur Umarov. He was imprisoned on alleged charges and his case was fabricated. He had been sentenced for eight years, reduced to seven years due to a change in the law and had already served 5.5 years there. He hadn't been covered by the five Presidential amnesties that were announced and implemented up to now. Why? They say he is a person under the observation of the President [Islam Karimov]. I ask international organisations, governments and journalists to provide help to this person if they have an opportunity. Q: You said that torture was common in the prison, especially for political prisoners. What kinds of torture were you mostly exposed to? A: First of all, they treated us very bad. They would call political prisoners Hiz-but, not wanting to pronounce a prisoner's name. For example, in terms of observing their religious practices, due to a lack of clean water they [Hiz-but Tahrir members] use small pet bottles for ablutions. Guards would take away their bottles, would cut them with knives and would not allow them to pray. Some of them were kept for three months in the single cells without being taken out for a walk or so, in other words it was a torture. They were given food there and went to toilet there as well. Q: What do you plan to do now? A: After being released I will continue to serve our people. The first problem now is gathering the harvest, namely picking cotton, but we are paid very low for that. They [authorities] sell cotton for huge sums in [US] dollars, but pay people as little as US $0.02 per kg of picked cotton. Moreover, regarding silk cocoons growing our people haven't been paid since 2002. The economic situation of our community is very difficult. Q: Are you calling for international organisations and the international community to put pressure on Tashkent over it's human rights record? A: Uzbekistan has announced itself as a democratic nation after gaining independence [in 1991] in the witness of the whole international community. However, in reality there is no democracy at all in our country. First of all, one of the urgent issues at the moment is education. In some families there are between five and six children, the education year has started in Uzbekistan, but in the majority of the families not all children can go to school. For example, in my family there are five children of school age, but not all of them can attend school due to lack of education means and tools, and simply no clothes for them. On the other hand, humanitarian aid is said to be blocked by some people and it cannot reach us. Finally, I would like to ask international organisations and governments to support the human rights activists, like me in the country.