Uznews, Samarkand, 08 Aug 2008 – The Samarkand town police department launched a criminal case on hooliganism charges against three journalists and human rights activists after a group of market women attacked them on 5 August.
The “hooligans” are Zohir Hasanzoda, the Uzbek national Ovozi Tojik (Tajik Voice) newspaper’s correspondent in Samarkand Region, Pardakul Turakulov, Ovozi Tojik’s freelancer, and the head of Samarkand’s Centre for Human Rights Initiatives, Kamiljon Ashurov.
All three were charged with hooliganism under Article 277, Part 2 of the Criminal Code after certain women called Dilnavoz Mirmuhammedova and Salomat Hamrayeva filed a complaint that the men had allegedly attacked them on the street and beaten them up.
The men said that the police had turned everything upside down: it was they who were beaten up by a group of about 15 women on the street and at a police station.
They said that on 5 August they went to the Siab market in Samarkand’s centre after they had received complaints from traders about the market’s reconstruction and buyers who had complained about weight cheating.
At the market, they interviewed few people and went to the office of the market director to discuss the problems with him.
After listening to them carefully, the director explained the reasons for the reconstruction to them in detail and said that the market administration had already ordered over 1,000 electronic scales from Korea to fight weight cheating.
After the meeting, they left the market but on way home, they were stopped by a young woman who said that her mother wanted to talk to them.
Few seconds later several women approached the men and started shouting and swearing at them that they were hindering their work when the women had to work to feed their families.
Hasanzoda told the women that they could not understand their point and offered apologies, saying that it was a misunderstanding. But the women were outraged by his reaction and started to beat them up. Only police officers managed to stop the women.
Police officers asked the men to sit in car and took them to police station No 11 near the market. At the police station, over 15 women stormed into the room they were sitting and started swearing at the men. Police forced the women out of the room.
During all this, Kamiljon Ashurov’s felt pain in his heart and asked heart drops, and a police officer brought him medicines and a glass of water.
Soon afterwards, the women stormed into the room again and started to beat Hasanzoda and Turakulov up. They tore apart their shirts and broke glasses.
When Kamiljon Ashurov wanted to stop the women after taking heart drops, he fainted.
One of the women shouted: “One of them fell down, stop it, and let us go!” The women left the room.
“It is strange that police officers did not even try to stop the women,” the men said.
The journalists asked police officers to call an ambulance. Doctors arrived in about an hour, examined Ashurov, and offered him medical aid.
Zohir Hasanzoda and Pardakul Turakulov were taken to separate rooms and body searched in presence of witnesses. Police seized their mobiles, cameras, notebooks and other belongings, and forced them to write letters of explanations.
At about 1900, the three men were taken to the Samarkand town police department and upon the arrival of their lawyer, police officers started questioning them at 2130 to force them to admit that they themselves had attacked the women.
The men refused to do so and called the incident and the criminal case provocation.
The police said that they would continue to investigate this case and demanded that the men appear for questioning on 6 August.
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