…that police officers are trying to shield…

Uznews.net – Uzbek police are trying to claim that female convict Rayhon Soatova who was gang raped by police officers during an investigation and gave birth to a child in prison is a prostitute.

The Ezgulik human rights society said that the prosecutor’s office of Surhandarya Region’s Jarkurgan District, where Soatova comes from, was collecting evidence that the rape victim was a prostitute.

Prosecutors are forcing the chairman of her neighbourhood committee and her teachers to give references that she is morally unstable woman, Ezgulik said.

“The deputy prosecutor said that he had received this order from on high and they are working based on this order,” it said.

Human rights activists believe that police officers are trying to shield their colleagues from Tashkent’s Mirzo-Ulugbek district police department who are accused of raping Rayhon Soatova and her younger sister Hosiyat.

Rayhon was detained with her two sisters Nargiza and Hosiyat on 9 May 2009 by officers of the Mirzo-Ulugbek district police department after the Soatova sisters and a certain Nargiza Ashurmetova had an argument on jealousy grounds. All three sisters were later sentenced to different prison terms.

The Soatovas’ brother Abdusamat said that Rayhon had told him that when she was detained she had been raped by 12 officers of the Mirzo-Ulugbek police department and investigator of the Tashkent city police department Aziz Umarkhanov.

Seven months later Rayhon gave birth and she was transferred to a female prison in the village of Zangiota in Tashkent Region in early January 2010.

Abdusamat said that the officers had also raped the youngest of the sisters – Hosiyat, who was afterwards admitted to a psychiatric hospital.

Spokeswoman for the Prosecutor-General’s Office Svetlana Artykova, who was recently appointed senator, said in response to the accusations of police gang rape that there had been no violation of law by police officers against Rayhon.

Ezgulik said that officers had threatened to detain her mother and brother if she was going to expose the officers who had raped her.

The UN special rapporteur on torture, Manfred Nowak, said in January that he intended to get permission from the Uzbek government to visit the country to investigate this and other similar cases.

Surat Ikramov, the head of the Initiative Group of Independent Human Rights Activists of Uzbekistan, said that violence and torture in detention centres and prisons were a big problem in Uzbekistan. It is also complicated since these cases rarely become known to human rights activists and the public because officers threaten their victims, he suggested.

He also said that investigators often threatened to rape suspects or their relatives to obtain evidence.