Dear Mr Minister

First of all, I would like to extend you my sincere New Year greetings. I wish you strong health and success in all your future endeavors for the good of the Greek people.

I hope that you are informed on the events regarding the destiny of the Greek citizen Yanis Galanos.

The case is the following:

On November 13, 2013, he was arrested by armed people in the centre of Tashkent and taken to unknown destination. Not long after, Gulnara Karimova, a daughter of the President of Uzbekistan Islam Karimov, wrote on her page in twitter that Mr Galanos was being kept and tortured in the basement of pretrial prison of the National Security Service of Uzbekistan.

The press service of the Interior Ministry of Uzbekistan reported that Yanis Galanos had supposedly broken the article 225 (1) ‘’Violationof theRulesfor thesojourn in the Republic of Uzbekistan’’ of the Administrative Code of Uzbekistan which provides the imposition of a fine from fifty to one hundred times the minimum wage or deportation from the Republic of Uzbekistan.

Even if the officers of the interior of Uzbekistan couldn’t identify the individual, they could have done it on December 4, when the representatives of the human rights society ‘’Ezgulik’’ visited him in the Rehabilitation Centre under the Department of Internal Affairs of Tashkent.

In the present case, the law-enforcement authorities of Uzbekistan broke the law by themselves by having detained Mr Galanos for more than 24 hours. As according to the Administrative Code, the Interior Ministry of Uzbekistan should have either arrested Yanis or deport him outside the Republic.

Dear Mr Stavros Dimas,

In spite of the fact that Yanis Galanos had been released and that he is now safe, the life of his family members is still in danger. I wanted to inform you with this letter that their rights need to be protected by the Greek government. As Yanis’s mother Galanu Natalya is a citizen of Greece, she doesn’t have problem with leaving Uzbekistan for Greece. But his wife Klyueva Ekaterina and his daughter Galanu Elizaveta don’t have this possibility as they are Uzbek citizens.

Uzbekistan is one of the countries in the world where the system of exit permit is imposed. On the basis of this dragon law, the authorities of Uzbekistan can prevent the Yanis Galanos’s family from family reunion in Greece.

I would like to remind you a well-known truth, that from the very beginning of the independence on the international stage, the authorities of Uzbekistan conduct a feigned policy by announcing that human rights in Uzbekistan are not being violated, tortures are not being applied, etc, at important international meetings, symposium and conferences through theOffice for Democratic Institutions and Human Rightsof theOrganization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, as well as in their human rights reports presented to the Human Rights Committee and the United Nations Committee Against Torture.

As the head of the International Human Rights Organization ‘’Fiery Hearts Club’’ who had learnt on her own cost the horrors of several years’ prison detention of authoritarian political regime in Uzbekistan, I can certify that the statements and reports of the Uzbek government are false from beginning to end.

That it is why I am asking you to tell the Prime Minister of your country to persuade the Greek government not to remove from the agenda the case of the family of Yanis Galanos. It would be natural if the Greek government appear with the assessment of delinquency committed by the Uzbek government in the case of Yanis Galanos and his family.

Sincerely yours,

Mutabar Tadjibayeva,

The President of International Human Rights Association
«Fiery Hearts Club», a winner of Liberty, Equality, Fraternity
Human Rights Prize of the French Republic, a torture victim and
former political prisoner, a winner of Martin Ennals Award for
Human Rights Defenders, Nobel Prize nominee of “1000 Women for Peace”

26 December 2013

Paris, France