The activist suggested that the assailers had aimed to kill him and he had survived by chance.
“On 23 February at about eight o’clock in the evening I was repairing my motorbike in my garage. Suddenly someone approached from behind and strangled my neck, asking threateningly: ‘Do you write on the Internet?’” he said. “In order to free myself I punched my hand backwards and hit his eye quite seriously.”
He added that when the attacker set him free someone hit him with a metal stick on his temple, as a result of which he fainted.
Tikhonov thinks that the assailers stopped because they had to deal with the eye of one of them and they retreated when his friend was on his way to the garage.
There is no need to hit people with a metal stick on their temple to intimidate them, which is why this was an attempted murder, the activist believes. When he was taken to a local hospital he demanded police, called by doctors, open a criminal case into the incident.
He said that officers had tried to dissuade him from demanding the launch of a criminal case because it would be hard to uncover it since he did not see the assailers and would not be able to identify them.
However, after his insistence the police department agreed to launch the case and an investigation. Fearing another attack, the activist went into hiding in his friends’ homes, until the head of the Human Rights Alliance of Uzbekistan, Yelena Urlayeva, arrived in Angren and demanded police investigate this case.
Police have already questioned Tikhonov and ordered the forensic medical examination of him. However, it is not clear whether police will really find those guilty.
Angren’s only human rights activist has annoyed many officials, businessmen and police officers. For example, his activities led to the imprisonment of several local officers.
This means there are many people to suspect of attacking the activist. However, a group of suspects may be reduced significantly if police base the investigation on the phrase said by one of the assailers: “Do you write on the Internet?”
The only article that quoted Tikhonov was published by Uznews.net on 4 February.
In the article the activist disclosed the crime committed at gold mines and jewellery shops in Angren and Almalyk.
A local resident suggested that after the publication of the article police must have pressured people involved in these crimes who had to pay great bribes to have charges against them dropped. “In order to punish the lover of truth who have inflicted damage on them they hired bandits,” he said.
Tikhonov had already been punished for his articles in the past: Abdrefiy Fefilov who featured in his article pushed him down from a seven-metre-high cliff and threw huge rocks on him, trying to hit him in the head.
Fefilov may have nothing to do with the recent assault, and it could be anyone who was annoyed with Tikhonov’s activities. Many activists, including Yelena Urlayeva, do not rule out that orders to attack the activist came from the authorities in Tashkent.
The Angren police are not in a very delicate situation: if they manage to catch Tikhonov’s assailers, they would easily establish the masterminds behind this crime, which will be extremely undesirable for the police.
Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.