To: Almazbek Atambayev, president of the Kyrgyz Republic.

Dear President Atambayev,

At its 2012 International Press Freedom Awards on November 20, the Committee to Protect Journalists will honor four journalists, who risked their lives to reveal abuses of power in Brazil, China, Kyrgyzstan, and Liberia.

One of the journalists, Kyrgyz reporter Azimjon Askarov, will not be attending the ceremony. Instead of accepting congratulations from his colleagues in New York, Askarov will be spending yet another night in a cold prison cell in Kyrgyzstan. Why? Because he reported on the wrongdoings of law enforcement in his region.

These are the same officials who fabricated charges against Askarov in order to punish him. They put him through a sham trial in which he was, predictably, found guilty.

Askarov, an innocent man, is now serving a life term in prison, where he has been repeatedly tortured.

We, the undersigned, ask that you use the authority of your office to ensure that Azimjon Askarov is released at once and that his torturers are brought to trial. You have the chance to right a terrible wrong, and we call on you to use the opportunity.

Find full petition here www.causes.com/freeaskarov.

Azimjon Askarov, an ethnic Uzbek from southern Kyrgyzstan, is an investigative journalist and human rights activist who exposed systematic human rights abuses by Kyrgyz police and prosecutors—including the fabrication of criminal cases against critics, arbitrary detentions, and the torture, rape, and murder of detainees.

Through his exposés, Askarov sought truth and justice and even ended the careers of some corrupt officials. “They hated me,” the journalist told CPJ in an interview from jail. Officials threatened to imprison him in retaliation for his reporting even then, a CPJ report found.

When Askarov began to document the 2010 ethnic clashes in Kyrgyzstan, regional police imprisoned him and demanded that he hand over his materials. When he refused, the officials fabricated a set of criminal charges against him, locked him up, and tortured him.

Askarov’s trial brought no relief: The judge ignored the lack of evidence against him, failed to admit testimony from defense witnesses, and paid no attention to the journalist’s multiple bruises. Askarov’s lawyer was threatened and assaulted in the courtroom, but court authorities ignored those blatant violations as well.

On September 15, 2010, the court convicted Askarov and sentenced him to life in jail. His subsequent appeals were denied, even by Kyrgyzstan’s Supreme Court.

Askarov’s case, which has been challenged by a range of human rights groups, U.N. officials, and the Kyrgyz government’s own human rights ombudsman, is emblematic of all that is wrong with Kyrgyzstan’s justice system. The current Kyrgyz government has pledged its commitment to the rule of law and democratic reform, but if it is serious about these pledges, it must take the first step of unconditionally releasing Askarov.