Birdamlik members given big fines over picket.

14.06.12 12:10

Three of the Birdamlik (Solidarity) movement activists detained for attempting to protest near the Kyrgyz embassy in Tashkent on 12 June have been given large fines while other picketers got away with warnings.

“Mirzo-Ulugbek district criminal court judge Ashurmatov sentenced us on charges provided for by part one of article 201 of the code of administrative liability `for violating the procedures for organising and holding assemblies, rallies and street demonstrations’,” Birdamlik members have reported.

They said the head of the Birdamlik people’s movement in Uzbekistan, Malohat Eshankulova and Sanoat Abdurakhmanova from Tashkent Region and Jizzakh-based Sardor Urolov received fines of 80 minimal monthly wages.

Today this amounts to 5,033,600 sums (or about $1,760 at the black market rate).

“I thought the Uzbek authorities and personally President Karimov are frightened by what is going on in the Arab world, Russia and other countries,” US-based Birdamlik leader Bahodir Choriyev told Uznews.net. “Therefore they were even frightened by the small picket and so `generously’ fined its organisers”

Everyone was seized

Eshankulova spoke of details of the 12 June event during which she and her associates gathered to protest

	“Birdamlik members went on a picket with a placard reading – Peace for Fergana Valley”

against the Kyrgyz government, which they thought was “responsible for the June 2010 bloody events in the south of Kyrgyzstan and is still practicing a policy of apartheid”.

“We gathered for the action near the Irrigation institute and there were about 40 of us,” Eshankulova said.

According to her, another about 15 Birdamlik members from provinces called her on the phone at that moment to say they were delayed on the way, but they would arrive 15-20 minutes later.

Birdamlik members decided to start the action without the latecomers who they thought would join the picket later.

“At about 11 o’clock in the morning, we took to the Kyrgyz embassy, walking in separate groups of 10-15 people,” Eshankulova said.

Obviously, this is why the majority of Birdamlik members escaped detention. Officers of law-enforcement agencies concentrated attention only on the first group, which included

	Protesters also had placards in the Kyrgyz language.

the action organisers.

“Police attacked us when we still had a long way to go to the Kyrgyz embassy,” Eshankulova said.

Over 30 members of law-enforcement agencies seized her and other 14 people, shoving them violently into a car and took them to the Mirzo-Ulugbek police department in Tashkent.

At the same time, police looked so zealous that they happened to detain several passers-by, among them one pregnant woman, who were sent home later.

Lawyers not given, video camera “pocketed”

The remaining 10 Birdamlik members demanded that they be given a lawyer and even made an official claim, but they were not given one.

“We were sentenced at about 2030, but we managed to get home only at 12 midnight,” Eshankulova continued.

She said Birdamlik members had to go back to the police department to claim back the video camera built in the spectacles that officer called Ulugbek had taken home for some reason.

Uznews.net