Uznews, Tashkent, 23 Jan 2009 – Writer Yusuf Juma, who was locked up in the Jaslyk prison in northern Karakalpakstan, has been placed in an information vacuum and is not allowed to see his relatives or lawyer who are forced to make their worst conclusions.
His daughter Feruza last time visited Juma, a fervent writer from Bukhara Region, in Jaslyk, where he is serving his five-year term, in early November 2008.
His wife Gulnora Oltiyeva said neither Feruza, nor his other relatives had managed to visit him since then. The prison administration does not let them see him, saying that he is in a solitary cell and is not permitted meetings.
Sometimes prison guards do not give explanations and ask his relatives to go back home. His lawyer Rustam Tulyaganov has not managed to see him since last August.
That it is impossible to see Juma and make sure that he is at least alive, Oltiyeva said, forces her to think about the worst that her husband might have died in prison.
As soon as he was transferred to Jaslyk, he faced torture and mistreatment. Moreover, he was forced to share a cell with people who have a serious form of tuberculosis and was deprived of food and water.
His daughter Feruza said that at the November meeting he looked very ill and grew thin, while his body was covered in bruises because he is being regularly beaten up. He told her that two prison guards – Kahramon Pirnazarov and Dovul Arziyev – mostly beat him up, kicking him with heavy shoes.
“I cannot believe that Yusuf repeated the fate of our son Mashrab,” Oltiyeva said about the impossibility of seeing him.
The writer’s son Mashrab Juma was detained in late 2007 on charges of stabbing a man. In January 2008, he was sentenced to four years.
However, since last June the Bukhara Region television channel has been broadcasting a police announcement that Mashrab broke out of prison and is wanted by police.
None of his family members believe that Mashrab could break out of prison. They think that “prison break” is a cover-up for his death.
Oltiyeva said that her relatives had heard from guards of the Otbozor prison in Bukhara that Mashrab was killed in prison last June and this was being presented as prison break.
The family has been able to find out whether Mashrab and Yusuf Juma are still alive, and they asked the International Committee of the Red Cross’s mission in Uzbekistan to visit them in prison and appealed to the European Union, but they have not yet received an answer from them.
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