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June 11, 2015 - Updated on January 20, 2016Journalist held for 16 years must be freed at once
Ўзбек тилида ўқиш / Read in Uzbek
Читать по-русски / Read in Russian As Uzbekistan prepares to receive a visit from UN secretary-general Ban Ki-Moon on 12 June, Reporters Without Borders and the Association for Human Rights in Central Asia call on the authorities to immediately release Muhammad Bekjanov, one of the world’s longest held journalists. Awarded the Reporters Without Borders press freedom prize in 2013, Bekjanov used to edit Uzbekistan’s main opposition newspaper. Married, the father of three children and now aged 60, he has been held for the past 16 years. As the editor of Erk (Freedom) in the early 1990s, Bekjanov tried to start a debate on such taboo subjects as the state of the economy, the use of forced labour for the cotton harvest and the Aral Sea environmental disaster. As result, he became one of the leading bugbears of President Islam Karimov, who was then forging the authoritarian regime he still leads. Karimov took advantage of a series of bombings in Tashkent in 1999 to silence his critics. Like many pro-democracy activists, Bekjanov was tried as an accomplice and was sentenced to 15 years in prison. His sentence was reduced in 2003 but in January 2012, just a few days before he was due to be released, he was sentenced to another four years and eight months in jail on a charge of disobeying prison officials under article 221 of the criminal code. Yusuf Ruzimuradov, a fellow Erk journalist who was arrested at the same time as Bekjanov, is also still being held.
Читать по-русски / Read in Russian As Uzbekistan prepares to receive a visit from UN secretary-general Ban Ki-Moon on 12 June, Reporters Without Borders and the Association for Human Rights in Central Asia call on the authorities to immediately release Muhammad Bekjanov, one of the world’s longest held journalists. Awarded the Reporters Without Borders press freedom prize in 2013, Bekjanov used to edit Uzbekistan’s main opposition newspaper. Married, the father of three children and now aged 60, he has been held for the past 16 years. As the editor of Erk (Freedom) in the early 1990s, Bekjanov tried to start a debate on such taboo subjects as the state of the economy, the use of forced labour for the cotton harvest and the Aral Sea environmental disaster. As result, he became one of the leading bugbears of President Islam Karimov, who was then forging the authoritarian regime he still leads. Karimov took advantage of a series of bombings in Tashkent in 1999 to silence his critics. Like many pro-democracy activists, Bekjanov was tried as an accomplice and was sentenced to 15 years in prison. His sentence was reduced in 2003 but in January 2012, just a few days before he was due to be released, he was sentenced to another four years and eight months in jail on a charge of disobeying prison officials under article 221 of the criminal code. Yusuf Ruzimuradov, a fellow Erk journalist who was arrested at the same time as Bekjanov, is also still being held.