In early December 2013, Gulnara Karimova, the Uzbek President’s eldest daughter, gave an interview to Turkish Hurriyet newspaper, in which she accused Uzbek human rights activist Mutabar Tadjibayeva of playing a significant role in a large criminal organization. At present, Tadjibayeva resides in France.

Following this, Tadjibayeva made a statement and demanded that “Hurriyet” and Gulnara Karimova make public apologies.Otherwise, the human rights activist threatened to sue Karimova and the newspaper as soon as possible in order to protect her honor, dignity and business reputation.

However, some time later, Gulnara Karimova thanked human rights activist Tadjibayeva on Twitter for assistance to free Greek citizen Yannis Galanos, her former employee.

This act of Gulnara Karimova has generated criticism from some Uzbek human rights defenders, journalists and oppositionists against Tadjibayeva.

Mutabar Tadjibayeva, the head of “Fiery Hearts Club” international human rights organization, gave an interview to “Jarayon” to answer questions related to her recent relationship with Gulnara Karimova, the eldest daughter of President Islam Karimov. She also responded to questions in regard to critical statements made by some civil society and opposition representatives following the communication between the human rights activist and the President’s daughter, and allegations that Tadjibayeva cooperates with the Uzbek security services posted by some websites covering developments in Uzbekistan.

Jarayon: Ms. Tadjibayeva, let’s start our conversation with your recent interview to the Uzbek service of Radio BBC. The material titled “Tadjibayeva: Gulnara realized her mistakes” has caused sharp criticism against you from oppositionists, represenatatives of the civil society, human rights activists and some independent journalists. If I am not mistaken, the reason for this interview was Gulnara Karimova’s words of thanks to you she posted on Twitter for providing legal assistance to her former employee Yanis Galanos, a Greek citizen. Could you tell our readers about your current relationship with Gulnara Karimova from the very beginning to make it clear?

Mutabar Tadjibayeva: After “Hurriyet”, a Turkish newspaper, published an interview with Gulnara Karimova on 8 December, in which she slandered and insulted me, our website posted my statement on 13 December, which was titled “Gulnara Karimova must answer for her libel”. In my statement, I demanded that Gulnara Karimova and Hurriyet make public apologies to me. I warned that if my demands were not fulfilled, I would sue Karimova and the newspaper as soon as possible to protect my honor, dignity and business reputation. I will say this again that I said the following: “I will sue them if they do not bring me apologies in the press”. However, in my statement I said that struggle for power in Uzbekistan is becoming tense day by day, and there is a possibility that Gulnara’s opponents purposely have her slandered me.

In a posted interview, Hurriyet journalist Asli Baris asked Gulnara Karimova the following question: “Accusations made by you are denied by other participants of the events. For example, you wrote on Twitter last week that Uzbek investigators had tortured Yanis Galanos. He claims that this never happened”.

Gulnara Karimova started answering the questions with insults against me:

“It is a setting of Mutabar Tadjibayeva. Let’s take it from the start. Nongovernment organizations, embassies, foreign public media resources and bloggers reported that Yanis Galanos was kidnapped from a taxi in the center of Tashkent by armed guys in two cars, without any info to his family”.

I carefully read each line in this interview concerning me to reveal evidences that Gulnara slandered me. I also found out that none of non-governmental organizations, embassies and media outlets disseminated information about the kidnapping of Yanis Galanos. Before Gulnara Karimova mentioned that on Twitter, Centrasia website published a short post on 16 November stating that Greek citizen Yanis Galanos was kidnapped in the center of Tashkent on the presidential highway by armed men in two vehicles, who forced the taxi stop by roadside. At the end of the post, there were the following words: “Please help. At least by means of publications”. And the phone number of Yanis Galanos’s mother in Uzbekistan was provided (+998911621313).

(Link to this post: http://www.centrasia.ru/newsA.php?st=1384601820).

I do not want to talk about these events again. All those, who are interested in the details of these events, can find and read the following materials on Jarayon website: “Gulnara Karimova must answer for slander”, “I demand public apology and denials from Hurriyet Daily News”, “Yanis Galanos’s relatives asked Tadjibayeva for help”, “Yanis Galanos was released”, “To Foreign Minister of Greece, Mr Stavros Dimas”.

Having read Gulnara Karimova’s interview, I became interested in the story of Yanis Galanos. Then I contacted family members of the guy using the phone number provided by Centrasia website to get information about him.

They informed me that Yanis was arrested on 13 November and his family members were not allowed to see him for 33 days, that they did not know about his whereabouts, and pressure was put on them. They said that instead of meeting legitimate demands of his family members and the lawyer to organize a meeting with Yanis, Uzbek officials continued intimidating his family members. After Yanis’s relatives learned from me that I did not meet him in detention and that I had nothing to do with preparation and dissemination of the video, they asked me to provide legal assistance to them to defend Yanis Galanos. I gave them my email address so that they could send me necessary documents. This is how I began my communication with Yanis Galanos’s relatives.

On 22 December, our website “Jarayon” published the article titled “Yanis Galanos’s relatives asked Tadjibayeva for help”, which reported about our decision that Fiery Hearts Club, an international human rights organization, would protect this man’s rights.

On 23 December, the next day after the publication of the given article, the editor in chief of Jarayon and I received an email from the press service of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Uzbekistan. Later on, many online media outlets covering developments in Uzbekistan made reports referring to the given press release saying that the Uzbek side is discussing expulsion of Galanos to Greece, and that soon he would be deported to his homeland.

Yanis Galanos was sent to Greece via Istanbul by plane not on 24 December as it was written in the press release of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Uzbekistan, but the following day – on 25 December. The same day, Gulnara Karimova thanked on Twitter all those who fought for liberation of Yanis Galanos. “Yanis Galanos, a European citizen, who was in a SNB cell (SNB – the National Secuirty Service), is finally released! Thanks to everyone, who has contributed to his release. Thanks to foreign information agencies, bloggers, Hurriyet, his students, human rights activists led by Mutabar Tajibayeva, the Embassy of Italy, etc.” Karimova wrote.

Prior to these events, precisely on 23 December, Gulnara Karimova sent me an email. The content of this email was the same what she wrote on Twitter two days later. Before answering Gulnara, I consulted with my supporters, and then I sent Karimova a reply e-mail. In my email to Gulnara, I wrote that she should bring me an apology for that libel in the interview with the Turkish newspaper. I also wrote to her that it is important for me and for her. Furthermore, in my email I noted that if she did not bring me a public apology, then I would have no choice but to bring an action against her according to my previously declared decision. In addition, I wrote Gulnara about pressures and persecution, tortures and unfair trials my followers and I suffered when I was engaged in my human rights activities in Uzbekistan. Also in my email to Karimova, I stated that she was unfair when she accused me of serving the SNB and affiliation with a criminal group that appropriates money from cotton collection; in fact, Karimova accused me, a victim of the regime, a person whose life was attempted only because I was one of the first, who asked to boycott Uzbek cotton as child labor is used to collect it.

The next day after I sent my email to Gulnara Karimova, she wrote on Twitter that she regretted her words she had previously written about me and expressed her gratitude for our legal protection we provided to Yanis. A number of online media outlets wrote about this, including BBC Radio.

Prior to the release of this material on BBC website, BBC journalists addressed me with a few questions. In my responses to BBC journalists, I really said that Gulnara Karimova realized her mistake, which later on some oppositionists, representatives of the civil society, human rights defenders and independent journalists did not like. However, these words of mine only meant that Karimova regrets her slander against me only in regard what was stated in the interview to Hurriyet, and that she has acknowledged challenges the civil society in Uzbekistan faces.

After that, some human rights activists, oppositionists and journalists took such a great interest in my interview with the reporters of the given radio that they began asserting that I “tried to show Gulnara a goody-goody” and consequently began interpreting my interview with BBC quite differently. One thinker, P. Beaumarchais, wrote: “To say something without being able to prove it legally is slander.” At the moment, assumptions of my critics that “I have taken the side of Gulnara Karimova for the sake of benefits” is nothing but slander against me.

I would say “bravo” if anyone of them will present any of my statements made in the past, in which I called to forget all indecent acts of Gulnara. The most regrettable thing is that the people, who write and publish defamatory articles about me with such diabolical supposition (a person can lose much because of such supposition), know that everything written about me is slander, but being aware of this, they continue publishing material discrediting my honor.

Today, I am happy when my mentors, fellow-fighters and supporters from among human rights defenders and even some oppositionists inside the country rejoice over my (and not only mine!) successes. At the same time, I am surprised when some of “human rights activists” while communicating with me become hysterical having heard that I took Gulnara’s letter on Twitter as an apology, and now there will be no trial. Also I saw their inadequate attitude when they learned about the response of Hurriyet newspaper and that I am waiting for publication of my interview with this newspaper. However, it seems to me very strange that these people still argue that I do need to take Gulnara Karimova to the court.

In his interview to Mukhammadsalikh Abutov titled “The opposition should not be hasty to make conclusions”, human rights activist Sukhrob Ismailov advised Vasilya Inoyatova, Mutabar Tajibayeva and other civil society activists to be careful not to become a part of a game of third parties, and think before joining someone or not to rush to make statements.

Here I am grateful to Sukhrob for providing his opinion although not quite correctly, but he did not hide under any fictional pseudonym because others do such things quite differently. In his interview, Sukhrob Ismailov also said: “Some of our esteemed defenders or Galima Bukharbayeva made Gulnara almost a heroine, who, in their opinion, has recognized her mistake, and being a woman, Gulnara exposes such great things, which makes her a victim in the eyes of the public. I know that Sukhrob addressed these words to me, but I could not remember even one occasion, when I tried to make Gulnara a heroine. I do not understand why Sukhrob Ismailov stated all these without providing a single piece of evidence showing that I appeared to be a part of someone’s game.

Jarayon: Some observers argue that Gulnara Karimova has established cordial relations with some human rights activists and independent journalists in order not to remain alone in her struggle with Uzbekistan’s intelligence services. What do you think about this opinion?

Mutabar Tadjibayeva: I do not know what Gulnara Karimova thinks about this. But I can say that my connections with her have not reached a “friendly” status, and probably this is not going to happen in the near future. Gulnara is not a stupid woman, she is well aware that after one letter of hers I will not become her supporter. To have our relations improved at least by 51 percent, Gulnara Karimova should declare a total war against the regime in Uzbekistan. In my opinion, Karimov is not ready to come to this decision. Because it would mean that she declares a war against her father.

Dwelling on my relationship with Gulnara, I would like to emphasize one thing – I did not make any mistake to make excuses to someone! I never make decisions by myself in regard my statements about serious situations. I do not have secrets from my friends, who work closely with me. We always discuss every question regarding Gulnara and the government together. After coming to a unanimous decision, we release a statement. Even my answers to these questions were discussed with our team. Here I do not mean that our team is responsible for making this decision, I just want to emphasize once again that being a victim of tortures and a critic of the regime, I never express any opinion being emotionally driven.

Jarayon: Ms.Tadjibayeva, you recently stated that in the near future you are going to start a campaign to release young people from prison, who have previously been involved in Gulnara Karimova’s projects. Have the latest developments related to your relationship with the daughter of the Uzbek President not discouraged you to protect these people?

Mutabar Tadjibayeva: Your question is very pertinent. I do not consider opinions of some human rights activists to be right, who argue that it is necessary to protect only ordinary people, and refuse to help those, who have become victims only because he or she is a relative, partner or employee of one of the parties of this political game. If we do not protect violated rights of these people, then who will protect them? What right do we have to simply sit and watch tortures being applied, people being illegally taken under arrest, who maybe involved in crimes of the two warring sides? But perhaps, these people are not involved.

Now we, as in the past, continue to deal with such high-profile cases as the case of Yanis Galanos. For example, we were engaged in cases of 29 Uzbek refugees, who were arrested in Kazakhstan. Though we could not save them, thanks to efforts of our organization, we have managed to have ACAT, a human rights organization based in Paris, submit a complaint on behalf of these individuals to the UN Committee Against Torture. We also were engaged in cases of Khairullo Tursunov and Kayum Ortikov, who now accuses the UK authorities of aiding the Uzbekistan Government. All these cases are being processed in the UN. It is strange that people, who have not expressed their criticism when we were engaged in protection of people accused of religious extremism and terrorism, now are trying to dissuade us from protecting employees of Karimova and other young people, whose rights are violated in the most flagrant manner.

Now strong pressure is put not only on several people, who have participated in various projects of Gulnara Karimova, but also on their families. Instead of examining written complaints of their relatives addressed to the President, Uzbek officials on the contrary increase pressure on them.

For example: After the manager of Terra Company was declared wanted, the intelligence services decided to have him come to the prosecutor’s office, and to have this happen, they arrested his sick son Abboskhon Aboskhudzhaev, a 4-year student of the Judicial Institute. They put the young guy in jail for 15 days. Sarwar Abidjanov, another creative person, a father of five young children, who published a magazine about culture, was detained like Yanis Galanos, when he was in a taxi. He was driven away in an unknown direction, now his whereabouts is unknown.

Alex Choi, who works in an advertising sector, was asked to come out of his house by deception. He was arrested, and now he is in Tashkent prison, the entire period of the preliminary interrogation (it 3-4 days) he he was not even allowed to drink water and did not allow a lawyer …I believe that authoritative international human rights organizations should demand that the Uzbek authorities should respond to each of these cases. I believe that a person prosectuted by the Uzbek authorities for any crime must answer before the law, but his or her rights must be observed without fail.

Jarayon: Recently some websites reporting on developments in Uzbekistan published an article by a Boris Saprykin. The story was titled “Karimova – Bukharbayeva – Tadjibayeva: to pay for loyalty, to buy solidarity.” The author writes that initially you and Bukharbayeva, the editor-in-chief of Uznews.net website, were vehement critics of Islam Karimov’s eldest daughter, and that you even wanted to sue Karimova for libel in the interview to Turkish newspaper “Hurriyet”. However, according to Saprykin, lately both of you took Karimova’s side for certain financial help. How valid are these statements made by Saprykin?

Mutabar Tadjibayeva: The article entitled “Karimova – Bukharbayeva – Tadjibayeva: to pay for loyalty, to buy solidarity” and “Gulnara Karimova bought Uzbek opposition”, published on the websites of organizations, who struggle againt Karimov’s regime and other sites, are written by a “political scientist” Boris Saprykin and Andrei Samokhvalov, who in fact do not reveal their real names.

The author, who introduced himself as Saprykin, wrote the following at the end of his material: “If I were Tadjibayeva, I would have thought about how stupid a person looks, who suddenly refuses principled (seemingly!) intentions to sue another person… But I am just Saprykin, who sits and thinks about women’s (or human’s in general) inconstancy and ideological unprincipledness.”

The “Russian political analyst”, who has appeared from somewhere and feels sympathy for the tragedy of the Uzbek people, behaves as if he has not read my statement, in which I said that I would take Gulnara Karimova to the court if she does not make an apology in the press to me.

When Gulnara Karimova slandered me, she did not hide her name, and she delivered her apologies on her behalf, and she did so in public. Now some unknown political scientists and others, who write various slander against me hiding their true names, cannot display the same courage as Gulnara Karimova did. If they had put their real names under their stories, I would have had an opportunity to ask them to prove their slander. Naturally, those who publish these materials, as well as the management of “Hurriyet”, who stated that they published an opinion of other people on the website, also would have avoided responsibility saying that I need to address my objections to people like “Saprykin” or “Samokhvalov”. In fact, I want to have worthy opponents. I would not consider it worthy to compete with slanderers, who did not have the courage to meet me face to face, and who hid behind the curtain.

I expect that these slanderous articles are actually written by our Uzbeks. I think that they realize that all this is slander, but they signed their stories under such names as Saprykin and Samohvalov only to divert the public attention.

In these articles, they accused me of giving up my principles. In other words, they accused me of unprincipledness, of making ​​friends with Gulnara Karimova hoping to get some benefit from this. And the funniest thing is that they even accused me of being a National Security Service agent.

I decided to separately clarify each of these accusations so that slanderers stop harping on the same topic. Maybe for some people this is my statement, and for some people this is an oath of mine. I would like to point out that this statement of mine is not addressed to slanderers (since they can keep doing what they do), but on the contrary, my appeal is addressed to people with pure souls, who could think after various slander “is this really true?”

First of all, I do not abandon my principles. I will continue struggling against the inhuman regime until a just society is formed in Uzbekistan, in which human rights will be really respected. Moreover, I will demand that the people (even if they have previously worked with Gulnara Karimova), whose rights are grossly violated, should be treated properly as human beings. I will say this again: if these people have committed crimes, they must answer before the law; but they should be prosecuted without insults, without tortures and without violation of their rights; and if they did not commit crimes, they should be released without any pressure, persecution and reproaches. If we dream of a just society, we cannot take an it-serves-him/her-right position, otherwise there will be no difference between us and Karimov’s regime.

Secondly, I have not received any money from Karimova or any other promises, either directly or through anyone. I have never had such intentions. Who knows, maybe that was why Gulnara Karimova brought me apologies? I have to say one thing to calm down those, who become hysterical over the fact that I supposedly “made friends with Gulnara”, our opinions coincide only in regard to one point – “rights of people are violated by SNB”. On many other issues our views may differ, this is quite natural.

Thirdly, I am not an agent of the National Security Service (in fact, even Saprykin and Samohvalov do not believe this). If I really had been an SNB agent, my name would have been deleted from the SNB blacklist. If I really had been an SNB agent, why then did I raise the alarm about tens of crimes of Uzbek security services? Then why did I fight against Khamidhuzhi Saidov, the SNB chief of the city of Margilan? Then why did I defend inhabitants of the village of Durmen, when the SNB and other law enforcement agencies began oppressing residents of the village only in order to conceal the truth about SNB investigators Abdushukur Mirzaev and Bobir Fozilov, who killed Alimukhammad Mamadaliev, a residents of the village of Durmen, while brutally torturing him.

As a result, each of the SNB investigator, who killed the man using tortures, was prosecuted and sentenced to 15 years of imprisonment. Journalists, employees of international organizations and embassies were allowed in the courtroom during the judicial process (please, note that such things rarely happen in Uzbekistan) against these SNB officials, which took place in the national military court in Tashkent. The question is why did I do this if I had been an SNB agent?

Forty days after the Andijan tragedy, I sent a telegram to the President of Uzbekistan, perhaps I did so only because I was an “agent”?

Soon I will post all documents on my personal blog, that prove falsity of that slanders directed against me, and I hope that having read all these materials, my countrymen learn about and appreciate Mutabar Tadjibayeva.

In fact, there is a logical inconsistency in Saprykin-Samohvalov statements. On the one hand, they are trying to accuse me of subservience to Gulnara Karimova, who fights with the SNB, on the other hand, they accuse me of serving the SNB, which is struggling with Gulnara Karimova. In fact, these two assertions are unfounded.

As I am not under anyone’s control or influence, and strongly defend my opinion, some people slander me accusing me of being an SNB agent. Some people say that I sold myself to Gulnara Karimova. In my opinion, all these mean that our work is fruitful. Therefore, we are on the right path. I do not intend to make more statements regarding all the slander that is directed now against me. Because we have more important things to do than respond to all this dirt. No matter how hard slanderers tried to discredit my name, only representatives of our nation decide whom to trust, and whom not to believe.

Jarayon: Ms.Tadjibayeva, thank you for the interview.

Interviewed by Sofia DAVRONOVA