Uznews, Tashkent, 06 Aug 2008 – Convicted dissident writer Yusuf Juma has been sent to the Jaslyk prison in northern Karakalpakstan to serve his sentence and is facing torture there, his relatives say.
The writer’s daughter Feruza Yusufjon-kizi has just come back from Jaslyk where she had a meeting with her father.
All her concerns related to the reputation of the prison, which is known as a concentration camp created by the Islam Karimov for destroying ideological opponents, had grounds.
She said she had met Juma Yusuf who had been beaten up heavily. “All his face was smashed and I could see one fresh scar on top of another. Eyes, lips and cheeks were swollen and bleeding. All his head was in injuries, and bruises and scratches on his skull were clearly seen even through his hair,” the daughter said after her meeting with Juma.
Yusuf told Feruza that upon his arrival at Jaslyk he had not been fed or given water for three days. He was later thrown into a concrete cell without furniture or a bed which was already full of other convicts who were suffering from a serious form of tuberculosis and even HIV.
Juma said that prison wardens beat him up and tortured in the concrete cell. Before the meeting with his daughter, he was beaten up heavily by a warden called Dovul on 1 August, Juma said.
Since he was imprisoned last December, including spending the past month at Jaslyk, Juma has lost weight and now weighs about 40 kg, Feruza said.
The dissident’s wife Gulnora Oltiyeva could not hear news about her husband without tears and urged all people who are indifferent to the fate of her husband to help her. She has repeatedly written letters to the US administration and the EU, but has not yet received any reply from them.
Gulnora Oltiyeva said that Juma had not to be sent to the Jaslyk prison.
After he was sentenced to five years in prison (for insulting police) in Bukhara in April, he was first sent to a Tashkent prison, then to a prison in Kungrad in Karakalpakstan.
Oltiyeva said that as a punishment for using the toilet without permission he was taken to a prison in Nukus, the Karakalpak capital, and from there to Jaslyk.
Jaslyk, a former Soviet military base, was turned into a prison for political and religious prisoners by the Karimov regime.
Prisoners said that when the Jaslyk prison was opened inmates died by the dozen every month because of torture or malnutrition, or even the harsh climate: temperatures drop to 40-50 degrees below zero in winter and rise to plus 60 in summer there.
The most scandalous murders of inmates at Jaslyk were the killings of Muzaffar Avazov and Husnutdin Olimov in August 2002. They were sentenced for alleged membership of the Hizb-ut Tahrir Islamic party. An independent expert examination established that both men had been boiled to death.
Oltiyeva thinks that it is not accidental that her husband was sent to Jaslyk. The authorities aim to kill him if not by torturing then by surrounding him with tuberculosis sufferers or even harsh climate at Jaslyk.
“We have to do something,” Oltiyeva said. “Advise me what I should do.”
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