Dear 39th Congress Participants! Let me congratulate you with the occasion of this Congress and with success to your work.

I am Mutabar Tadjibayeva, an independent journalist and human rights defender from Uzbekistan, founder and leader of “Fiery Hearts” International Human Rights Association which has been an FIDH member since 2013, living in France as a regugee since 2009.

I wished I attended this Congress to outloudly speak out about human rights problems in Uzbekistan, raise the internatonal attention to a particularly diverse condition of the Uzbek political prisoners, and crisis of human rights NGOs in this country.

However, because of a number of problems I’ve faced for the last several years, including increasing attacks and hate campaigns by the Uzbek government and a group of individuals cooperating with the Uzbek government against me in person and “Fiery Hearts” International Human Rights Assosication after we incorporated our human rights NGO in France in 2013, cyber attacks, more than 70 slanderous and blasphemous articles about me and my organization for the last two years, August 2015 death of my sister Mukharram Tadjibayeva who was a lawyer and closely cooperated with our organization, have all dramatically deteriorated my health conditions and my doctors told me even not to travel to a neighboring country for my medical treatment there, not even speaking about my travel to South Africa.

Because of funding problems my organization which was actively operating since I came out of the prison and the only in its kind website of the organization running in Uzbek, Russian and English languages had to stop their activities since two last years.

The funding problems with my organization and stopping activities of the organization and our website because of those problem have negatively affected my health condition and brought me into depression. Day by day number of human rights victims from Uzbekistan who need our help is on the rise but my human rights NGO with more than 16 years of history is unable to operate because of funding problems which has greatly tormented pain on me. Since the last two years we have stopped covering cases of torture and similar ill-treatment in the prisons of Uzbekistan. Their fates are not interesting to anyone now.

Only with the efforts and support from FIDH our organization was able to revive its activities beginning 2016. At present the organization is successfully running its news website, social media presence, YouTube channel and online radio channel.

Today August 25^th is my birthday. Every year on my birthday I remember an event from the past which is valuable to my heart and memories. In August 2007 while I was in prison in Uzbekistan Frontline Defenders – an international human rights NGO based in Ireland sent flowers to me to the prison and the prison administration was forced to give this flower to me.

That one bucket of flowers were able to penetrate the Uzbek penitentiary system. It was a huge blow to the dictatorship political regime in Uzbekistan. Because of that simple gift and action other inmates and prison administration have stopped mistreating me.

I would like to request the FIDH Congress participants to pay a close attention to the situation and individual cases described in our report “A look at the situation of human rights defenders and political prisoners in Uzbekistan” which is being presented at this Congress. This report tells about the ongoing situation of the current fundraising crisis with human rights groups and NGOs in Uzbekistan, torture and similar ill-treatment of the Uzbek activits and political prisoners.

 Please regard this statement as my plea on behalf of the Uzbek civil society representatives, independent journalists and human rights defenders. We need your help and support.

Mutabar Tadjibayeva
President of the Association Internationale de Dèfense
des Droits de I’homme “Club des Coeurs Ardents”
(International Association Human Rights “Fiery Hearts Club”)