Uzbek human rights activist Elena Urlaeva

August 18, 2011

The website Fergana.ru has reported that Elena Urlaeva, a rights activist in Uzbekistan, has been detained today in the eastern city of Namangan and told a colleague she is being beaten.Fellow rights defender Bahadur Namazov told Fergana.ru that Urlaeva called him “and with her voice trembling said they were beating her in the Namangan city police station.”

Namazov also told RFE/RL’s Uzbek Service that Urlaeva she was in detention.

Urlaeva is a leader of the Alliance of Rights Defenders of Uzbekistan. S

he has previously been jailed, forcibly admitted to a psychiatric hospital and beaten by men with knives in front of her child on the street in Tashkent.

Urlaeva was in Namangan to protest a decision by local authorities to charge three local television journalists with extortion.

with agency reports

http://www.rferl.org/content/rights_defender_urlaeva_reportedly_detained_beaten_in_uzbekistan/24300565.html