On March 13 in Geneva international NGO CIVICUS organized a meeting with three countries, such as Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan in order to examine the key areas of concern to be highlighted during each country’s upcoming Universal Periodic Review in April this year. The topic of the side event was “Eurasia: The silencing of Human Rights Defenders” and brought together both local and international NGOs, national civil society activists and professionals interested in this topic. Renate Bloem, head of Geneva UN Advocacy Office, CINICUS moderated the conference.

The discussion lasted about one hour and offered the participants a unique opportunity to speak freely about the devastating impact of the criminalization on the work of the human rights defenders in their countries. Fuad Hasanov, from the Azerbaijani “Democracy Monitor” explained the worsening situation with human rights defenders in Azerbaijan. Tadzhigul Begmetova, from the “Turkmenistan Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights” spoke about criminalization of independent journalists and human rights defenders in Turkmenistan. Ms.Begmetova has been with Helsinki Foundation for many years and now lives in asylum in Bulgaria. In her speech she described several UN recommendations, which Turkmenistan has adopted but they have never been implemented.

For example for the last periodic review, such countries as Poland and Netherlands advised to change the registration process of NGOs and give them more freedom. But according to Ms.Begmetova it is impossible to register any NGO in Turkmenistan and also the law on public associations imposes fictional restrictions regarding international cooperation. “In our country independent NGOs do not exist, because their activities are being closely controlled and monitored by the regime. Since 2000 the number of NGOs declined, now we have only about 99, notably that one quarter are sport organizations”, she explained.

Mutabar Tadjibayeva, head of the International human rights organization “Fiery Hearts Club” presented the petition recently introduced. Ms.Tadjibayeva wants to attract attention to the problem of political prisoners in Uzbekistan and their fate. She appealed to the citizens of “free Europe” and encouraged everyone to sign this petition. The full text can be found here:

http://www.jarayon.com/en/index.php/human-rights/item/89-petition

Also, during the event Marina Lebedeva, a representative of the Student Movement “Fiery Hearts” spoke about the situation of human rights activists and independent journalists in Uzbekistan. She also mentioned with concern the case of Khairullo Tursunov, asylum seeker, who was recently extradited to Uzbekistan, despite the interim measures ordered by the UN Human Rights Commissioner.

Note: Uzbekistan was first time examined under the UN UPR in 2008 and the government undertook to implement recommendations provided by other states. Nonetheless, after four years human rights organizations report grave violations in almost all areas: restrictions on inter-net freedoms, persecution of civil society, illegal imprisonment,human rights violations perpetrated in the fight against “religious extremismand more. The Netherlands Helsinki Committee,International Partnership for Human Rights and the Initiative Group of Independent Human Rights Defenders of Uzbekistan exclusively prepared a report as a contribution to the second review of Uzbekistan. Full text can be found here:

http://www.iphronline.org/un_uzbekistan_20121008.html.

Marina LEBEDEVA