The years of independence in Uzbekistan have seen many cases of illegal arrests, beatings, torture, and unfair trials, and the victims were not only the critics and opponents of the regime of president Islam Karimov, but also thousands of innocent Muslim believers.

Many Uzbek Muslims, including women, were sentenced to many years in prison for so-called membership in the banned religious organizations in the country. Although, many local and international organizations declare the innocence of these people, and that the charges against them were fabricated by the Uzbek authorities.

During my work as a journalist, I had a chance talk and interview many Muslim men and women from Uzbekistan. From some of them I’ve heard about the brutal torture that horrifies the human mind, and they were applied to them by law enforcement and intelligence agencies during interrogation and imprisonment in jail.

Five years ago, in 2008, in Kazakhstan, I met a young woman from Uzbekistan named Aziza (name changed for ethical reasons). Then she was 26 years old. Her husband was an Uzbek refugee, who practiced Islam, who, at that time, was under arrest on the request of the Uzbek authorities and was kept in detention center of Almaty, Kazakhstan. Women fought for the release of her husband.

In Uzbekistan, her husband was declared wanted for alleged involvement in terrorist acts that took place between 1999 and 2004. After that, he was forced to flee the country to neighboring Kazakhstan. According to Aziza, Uzbek security forces demanded from her to tell the whereabouts of her husband, but, after she refused to cooperate with them, they started using physical torture.

During one of our conversations, Aziza told me a terrible story that happened to her in one of the law enforcement agencies in Uzbekistan. Here is a small excerpt from the story of a young Muslim woman:

“One of them pulled me by the hair and lifted my head, and the other, knowing that Muslims do not drink alcohol and do not eat pork, began forcibly pouring vodka and pushing pork sausage into my mouth. I felt sick. They demanded from me to tell them the whereabouts of my husband, but I did not know anything about the location of my husband then. After that they pushed me on the table, one was holding my hands, the other was pushing my neck, and they started raping me with a stick.”

It is very rare, when the believer, sentenced to long years in prison, is released from prison, even more rare when they are released safe and sound. In recent years in Uzbekistan, there have been many cases of prisoners convicted with religious charges. There are many cases when the relatives received the mutilated bodies of their imprisoned family members. History of the country has not seen a single case, when the prison administrations recognized the cases of torture that led to deaths of prisoners.

Kamoliddin Rabbimov, political scientist from Uzbekistan currently residing in exile in France, says that one of the main goals of Karimov’s regime is to prevent the influence of Islam and Muslims to the society. This plan is carried out by government’s repression, mass detention and torture, he says.

– Muslim prisoners are a big problem for the state. The conflict between the state and the faithful is a conflict between ideologies – Aqeedah and political thinking. Believers cannot give up their religious beliefs, and authorities cannot take the path of building a modern system that would be comfortable for the faithful. The authoritarian system, based on its interests, has made the believers a “primary target”, “hidden and open enemy.” The illegitimate repressive machine continues to work, struggling with the “enemy.” Its stop would mean a fall of a system to senior officials.

For this reason that the authorities are carefully undertaking a policy aimed weaken the believers, make them disabled. They are put in jails, persecuted, subject to continuous prosecution, the ones in exile are shot, and amnesty is not applied to them, and only their mutilated dead bodies are given to their relatives. All this is a part of a systematized state policy, and during the reign of Islam Karimov, this policy will not change, – says Kamoliddin Rabbimov.

The head of the International Human Rights Organization “Fiery Hearts Club”, Mutabar Tadjibayeva, spent several years in a women’s prison. By this, she has paid for her work as a human rights activist.

In prison, a human rights activist has become not only a direct victim of torture, but she has also witnessed how women in prison, including Muslim prisoners, were abused and tortured by prison staff.

Later, after she was released, Mutabar Tadjibayeva wrote an autobiographical book titled “Captive of Torture Island.” In the book, she tells about a terrible story of a 50-year-old Muslim woman named Sabohat Sherkulova, native of Navoi region of Uzbekistan, in the famous Tashkent prison.

Here is an excerpt from the book of Mutabar Tadjibayeva (author’s translation from Uzbek language).

“When I was in Tashkent prison, I learned that my cellmate, an agent named Shaipova Gulya, and her lesbian girlfriend Elena Maximova, who could enter our cell at any time, got an order from the top to torture Sabohat.

Elena Maximova and Shaipova Gulya were “informers” of the prison administration and National Security Service. Almost all human rights defenders in custody faced Maximova and Shaipova. At that time Shaipova Gulya and I were in the same cell. In prisons and detention centers, “informers” are granted special privileges not enjoyed by other female prisoners. Shaipova and Maximova at any time could go out of their cells and go to other cells of female prisoners.

Maximova often came to our cell, and read long lectures to me that I could go free only if I admitted my guilt and asked for forgiveness. Later I found out that Shaipova Gulya and her friend Elena Maximova used to visit Sabohat Sherkulova’s cell located in one corner of the women’s monastery. There, the two tortured and humiliated Sherkulova. They used the most brutal torture against her…

One day, when the pair of lesbians came to “visit” Sherkulova, several other women prisoners, who shared a cell with Sherkulova, attacked them in order to protect their cellmate…

When other female prisoners learned through the guards that Maximova and Shaipova forced Sherkulova to strip naked and stand on her feet near the toilet next to her cell, how the two raped her with their methods, women’s prison of Tashkent revolted… Due to the fact that my camera was on the opposite side of the prison and the administration forbade me to talk with other prisoners, I found out about this only later.

Other female prisoners revolted, as those two oppressors, one – a killer, and another – a drug addict, tortured Sherkulova so badly, as she started crying loudly to the whole prison. And when other prisoners called the guards and asked them to help Sherkulova, the guards did nothing but told them not intervene in this matter.”

Perhaps these stories of believers subjected to severe torture are similar to the stories of thousands of other Muslims living in Uzbekistan, who became victims in the hands of the executioners of Islam Karimov. This similarity horrifies any sane person. But the worse side of this is that so far there has not been a single brave government officer, who was courageous enough to openly react to the use of torture against prisoners, especially female prisoners – representatives of beautiful and at times physically weaker sex.

Sofia Davronova