Uznews, Tashkent, 13 Aug 2008 – Gulnora Oltiyeva, wife of the convicted dissident writer Yusuf Juma, has appealed to the UN Committee against Torture to help save her husband from dying in the Jaslyk prison and find her son Mashrab who has disappeared in prison.
Oltiyeva wrote in her appeal:
“On 17 December 2007, my husband Yusuf Juma was arrested for demanding the resignation of dictator Karimov who illegally put forward his candidacy for his third presidential term. My husband was heavily tortured during interrogations but he had not given up his views. On 15 April 2008, the court trial, initiated by the Uzbek authorities, sentenced him to five years in prison.
On 2 August, our daughter Feruza managed to see her father at the Jaslyk prison. At the meeting, Yusuf Juma told his daughter that he had been tortured since he was arrested. During these seven months, he has been in custody he has been in almost all prisons of Uzbekistan. He has been beaten up everywhere and he was told that he would not get of prison alive and that this was an order from high on.
He was tortured particularly violently on the presidential election day in Uzbekistan – 23 December 2007. All this has been sanctioned by heads of the operative group of the Bukhara detention centre No 64/3, Otabek Sobirov and Botirali Safarov. They both personally took part in torturing Juma, demanding that my husband vote for Karimov!
Nevertheless, he did not vote for the dictator, for his torturer.
My husband was systematically tortured everywhere he was sent to. Specially trained monsters waited for him at each detention centre and prison and tortured him as Islam Karimov’s personal enemy.
In all prisons and detention centres, he was held in solitary cells where prisoners who break the prison rules are kept but for no more than seven days. Yusuf Juma was held there all the time. In these cells, prisoners are not even given mattresses so they sleep on the concrete floor.
After all this dictator Karimov sent my husband to one of the world’s cruellest prisons – Jaslyk prison, dubbed by people as “barsa kelmes” which means “if you go you will never return”. Karimov sent him there with the hope of getting rid of him for ever.
At Jaslyk Yusuf Juma is held in a cell with prisoners who are suffering from HIV and tuberculosis. He is in a very bad condition and has lost his weight and now weighs about 40 kg.
On 1 August, wardens of the Jaslyk prison demanded that Yusuf Juma slander a 20-year-old convict, but he said that he himself was a victim of conspiracy and would never slander any honest person. After that, he was severely beaten up by the head of the first detachment of the Jaslyk prison called Dovul.
At the moment, leaders of all democratic countries, pursuing their national interests, see only positive moments of the Karimov totalitarian regime. They think that by abolishing the death penalty and allowing the Red Cross to monitor Uzbek jails Karimov has made a great step towards democracy.
However, after such “steps” they have started to kill convicts in prisons. They have put my 22-year-old son Mashrab who was arrested soon after his father was arrested on a wanted list. They tortured him violently and are now searching for him because he had allegedly escaped from prison! We do not know now whether he is alive or not…
At the same time, the Red Cross is inactive – it has not visited any prisoner in jail and has not answered our letters.
I demand that the UN immediately set up a commission to investigate torture and violent treatment cases in Uzbek prisons and if the country’s government obstructs this, this will mean that Karimov officially admits that there are problems in his jails.
Even in Hitler’s death camps wardens thought about killing people quickly and as painlessly as possible. Dictator Karimov is doing the contrary: he is killing each convict several times a day.
I insistently demand that you stop torture in Uzbek jails. If the Uzbek government ignores your demands, use your powers within international laws and pacts ratified by Uzbekistan.
Sincerely yours,
Gulnora Oltiyeva, wife of writer, journalist and human rights activist Yusuf Juma who is held in the Jaslyk prison”
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