To the Parliament of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

I am Mokhira Ortikova, Kayum Ortikov’ wife. He is a former employee of the British Embassy in Tashkent and a former prisoner, who has served a sentence in a merciless Uzbek prison. We have four children. We were forced to leave our homeland in 2012 following harassment of the Uzbek authorities.

I was confident that such a country like the United Kingdom, which enjoys great prestige in the world arena and has deep respect for human rights, being one of the key countries in the world, will not be indifferent to the fate of a person, who was a member of its diplomatic corps. I did not expect this country to leave the person without help and care, who has experienced terrible tortures on his body defending the honor of the British authorities.

Though we were encouraged by the interest of First Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs of Great Britain Baroness Sayeeda Warsi in our matter, we did not see any concrete results. Unfortunately, a long silence of the British authorities to my appeal and their active, close relations with the Uzbek dictatorship made ​​me raise the question if the British authorities are interested in delivering help to our family.

So I have decided to appeal to the Parliament of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland in order to inform that my husband Kayum Ortikov, a victim of tortures, is an illustrative example of the arbitrary actions of the Uzbek system. My family is just one of thousands families, which have suffered from violence of the dictatorship of the Uzbek government.

In my appeal to British Prime Minister David Cameron dated 30 June 2013, I wanted to illustrate the true state of the Uzbek nation using the example of our family and remind the British authorities about the responsibility for employees of their institutions.

In Uzbekistan, most depraved and cruel tortures have become common. Inmates in Uzbek prisons are subjected to terrible tortures. For example, inmates are starved, in winter they are kept naked outside. Another torture is to prick needles under their fingernails or apply hot iron against their bodies. For the “lastochka” (the swallow) position, victims’ right hands and legs are cuffed behind their back on the right side and their left hands and legs are cuffed behind their back on the left side (the author’s note). In addition, the following types of tortures are common in Uzbekistan: prisoners are kicked in their groins for several hours, they are hung by their hands up to the ceiling and while several people beating them one by one for 7-8 hours, and intimate parts of their bodies are burned. These are done to force confessions.

Such types of tortures were applied against my husband in January – August 2009 in Remand Prison # 1 (ordinary people call it Tashkent prison – the author), where they wanted him to confess that he was engaged in espionage for Britain’s benefit. And these are just some of hundreds of types of inhuman tortures my husband suffered in the Uzbek prison!

Each time waiting in the line in front of the prison’s door to see my husband, I saw hundreds of people, and I communicated with tens of them as I was interested in their fates. Then I made the conclusion that not only my family has suffered injustice and tortures, but also thousands of oppressed, abused and humiliated Uzbek families!

However, the Uzbek authorities do their best to deny all evidences of tortures and distract the world community with their reports, which reflect false statistics and in fact are meaningless.

On 29 October, 2013 in Geneva, the Uzbek delegation headed Akmal Saidov, the Director of the National Centre for Human Rights of Uzbekistan, blatantly lied to experts of the Committee against Torture in the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. Mr. Saidov, while answering specific questions about tortures, demonstrated “PECULIARITIES OF DICTATORIAL DIPLOMACY” to the whole world perfectly well. He ignored the question related to Kayum Ortikov.

However, despite what I mentioned above, the key countries – the UK, the USA, France and Belgium, do not take active and conscientious actions.

Patrizianna Sparacino-Thiellay, the Human Rights Ambassador from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of France, attended the international conference in Tashkent entitled “The role and place of the national human rights protection system in the modernization of the country: international practice and experience of Uzbekistan” on 23-25 October, 2013 as well as the international British-Uzbek forum titled “Pearl of the East: development of civil society institutions: concepts, models and approaches” on 13 November in London.

Akmal Saidov, the Director of the National Centre for Human Rights of Uzbekistan, and Svetlana Ortikova, the chairperson of the Senate Committee on Legal and Judicial Affairs, delivered their speeches at these two events. For some reasons, France and the Great Britain decided to conduct such international events in a narrow circle, i.e., without participation of independent journalists and human rights activists. The question arises – what was the purpose of such as “modesty”?!

In addition, according to media reports, the foreign ministers of the United Kingdom and Uzbekistan met in London on 20 November, 2013 to discuss withdrawal of the British troops from Afghanistan. And all this information about the meetings was held in strictest confidence.

I can say with great confidence that neither in Tashkent nor in London Mr. Akmal Saidov and Mrs. Svetlana Ortikova uttered a single word about inhuman tortures and abuses, which kill thousands of people in Uzbek prisons. They also did not speak about forced labor in cotton fields in Uzbekistan, where dozens of students, school children and women die every year. The Uzbek people is deprived of the most basic rights – the right to use the nation’s wealth: natural gas and electricity. Many other offenses are executed against the Uzbek nation, which are performed under direct supervision of such senior officials as Akmal Saidov and Svetlana Ortikova, who are concerned only with providing their families and the Karimovs with luxury.

I am also confident that while meeting with Uzbek colleagues, representatives of the French and British governments were not interested in human rights issues, lives of thousands of political prisoners, including the case of Kayum Ortikov. Despite the fact that these states are considered to be giants in regard of human rights observation, they secretly support the Uzbek dictatorship.

It is unfortunate for millions of citizens of Uzbeks that Karimov’s dictatorship lingers on and grows stronger while the poor and defenseless people of Uzbekistan continues to suffer from cynicism of their government.

Mokhira ORTIKOVA