Jailed Uzbek dissident writer barred…

Uznews.net – The Zhaslyk prison administration has prevented the imprisoned dissident writer Yusuf Juma from meeting his daughter Feruza. The prison administration has again reduced his meeting from three days to one and made his daughter leave the prison.

The writer’s wife, Gulnara Oltiyeva, who is residing in the USA, said that Feruza had arrived from Bukhara at the prison in Zhaslyk, a village in the north of Karakalpakstan, on 10 August to visit his jailed father Yusuf Juma.

Before she was allowed to see her father, she had had to wait for eight days in prison rooms, which are unsuitable for living, full of lice and bugs and has no basic facilities but which are still used by the administration to host relatives of inmates.

“Living in this `hotel’ is so humiliating as if the prison administration wants visiting relatives to taste the humiliation inflicted on Zhaslyk inmates,” says Oltiyeva.

Feruza was allowed to visit Yusuf Juma only on 18 August but she could only stay with him one day though they had the right to a three-day meeting.

“Feruza was called to the prison administration office, where the prison governor told her that she would never be allowed to set foot in the prison again and that she had to get the hell out of the prison,” Oltiyeva said.

The writer’s daughter had nothing to do but pick up her luggage and go back to Bukhara with tears in her eyes.

One-day meeting was enough for Feruza to know that prison guards are continuously beating and humiliating her father. One of the prison sadists, who recently beat up the writer violently, was a man called Jamshid Atayev.

Cruel attitude, physical violence, scarce food, the heavy climate of the north of Karakalpakstan and a dire tuberculosis situation in the prison are exhausting the writer, who has already become very weak.

“He looks very bad, there are traces of beatings all over his body and he can hardly walk. He has lost so much weight and grew old very much,” Feruza said.

Writer Yusuf Juma was arrested in December 2007 for staging a rally demanding the resignation of Islam Karimov, who was then preparing for the third unconstitutional presidential election.

In April 2008, Juma was sentenced to five years in prison on charges of humiliating and causing physical damage to a public official.

Following the issue of the sentence, he was transported under guard to the prison in the village of Kungrad in Karakalpakstan, but then he was moved to the Zhaslyk general prison in violation of the court ruling.

His tormentors justified the illegal transportation, beatings and humiliations by saying that “he is a personal enemy of President Islam Karimov”.

Uznews.net