Human rights activists take their fight for fair treatment to Supreme Court.

	Picket on Mustakillik Square on 6th December last year, for which the human rights campaigners were convicted

Human rights activists Dmitriy Tikhonov, Abdullo Tojiboy-ugli and Vladimir Husainov are asking the Supreme Court to overturn a judge’s ruling that they must pay huge fines for participating in a picket.

“On the first Friday of every month, ordinary citizens can request a meeting with the head of the Supreme Court, Buritosh Mustafaev. We put our names down for a meeting on 4th November, but we didn’t see Mustafaev,” said Husainov. He says that another Supreme Court judge heard their request and agreed to pass their concerns on to the Supreme Court Chairman.

The campaigners themselves are convinced that their request to have the Yunusabad criminal court order reviewed will be dismissed. “We realise that this is futile, but under existing rules, and rather than appealing to the UN Human Rights Committee in Geneva, we should protest about the unlawful court ruling to all relevant judicial authorities and the Chairman of the Supreme Court is the highest judicial authority in Uzbekistan,” says Husainov.

Dmitriy Tikhonov, Abdullo Tojiboy-ugli and fellow campaigner Victoria Bazhenova organised a demonstration in Tashkent’s Mustakillik Square on 6th December last year. Each addressed their specific demands to the authorities. Tojiboy-ugli called for democratic reforms, and Bazhenova for the right to hold peaceful demonstrations. Tikhonov drew attention to the fact that he had been refused permission to leave Uzbekistan although there were no grounds for an exit permit to be withheld from him.

Vladimir Husainov was not part of the protest but observed on the sidelines, as he had been invited to do by the other campaigners, in case the authorities were tempted to move illegally against the demonstrators.

But the police removed all the

	First page of campaigners’ appeal to the Supreme Court

protestors and Husainov, too. All were taken to Yunusabad district criminal court in Taskhent and on the same day were sentenced under article 201 of the Administrative Code (“Infringement of regulations on holding mass participation events”). Husainov and Bazhenova were find 60 times the minimum wage, or just under 3 million sums (around US$1200), and Tikhonov and Tijiboy-ugli were fined 70 times the minimum wage, apparently because they were holding placards.

The campaigners mounted an appeal but the Tashkent city criminal court upheld the original ruling.

Only Tikhonov paid the fine, having borrowed the money from colleagues overseas. He needed to go abroad to work and would not have been allowed to do so with the fine outstanding.

Yunusabad criminal court, the human rights activists believe, did not follow proper procedures in their original snap trial of the four campaigners, and for that reason, they say, their initial ruling ought to be overturned. The campaigners were denied the right to engage a lawyer, ‘fake’ witnesses were brought in, there were no translators, those charged were not kept informed of proceedings, and so on.

But the case has also provoked reactions on other fronts.

“The court charged us with breaking rules relating to mass events, but in fact we didn’t break those rules at all,” said Dmitry Tikhonov. He claims that according to these rules, those planning any sort of event must ask the local authority’s permission to hold the demonstration. Within ten days the applicants must be told in writing whether their application has been granted or refused. In this case the four protestors did apply for a permit but did not receive from the Tashkent authorities any refusal or permission, so in fact the local authority was in breach of the law.

According to the regulations, a mass participation event is any gathering involving more than 100 people. As Tikhonov points out, “the fact that there were only three of us suggests we did not meet this definition.”

He also says that the court’s ruling implied that the human rights activists were to be fined for taking part in a picket, yet Uzbek law does not have any provision relating to pickets as such.

As lawyer Tursunoy Pulatova explains, “the court could not have sentenced those who took part in the December picket using any other legal terminology. The judges, no doubt, received orders from above to make an example of these campaigners in their punishment of them, and therefore did not even try to give the impression that they were conducting the trial along proper judicial lines.”

 

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