SNB Threatens Jizzakh Youth Activists

Dmitriy Nurullayev and Aziz Yuldashev, natives of Uzbekistan residing in the United States, returned to their hometown of Jizzakh in late December 2011 to visit family. Both are officers of Awareness Projects International, a non-profit engaging in human rights education work in Uzbekistan and elsewhere.

On 2 January, Nurullayev was summoned to the local police department, where he was told to report to the main Jizzakh police department on 3 January. This first interview, conducted by two SNB officers, lasted an hour. The officers asked questions about Nurullayev’s past and present activities and accused him of desiring to overthrow the government of Islom Karimov by forming social and political movements among the youth. The agents were very aware of Nurullayev and Yuldashev’s non-profit group and the operations of their human rights projects in Uzbekistan.

The content of the programming at the camps was no doubt controversial in the eyes of Uzbekistan’s repressive government. The camps were held each summer 2007-2009 and covered issues such as human right, HIV/AIDS, and gender equality. Nurullayev was present for the 2007 and 2009 camps. He says that one topic on which he spent a lot of time was Uzbekistan’s political structure and how Islom Karimov is the unquestioned, sole authority over every part of government. He also told students that Karimov’s current term in office, his third, is unconstitutional, given the prohibition on more than two consecutive terms. Nurullayev says he also discussed mistreatment and sexual abuse of women, the widespread use of forced child labor in Uzbekistan’s cotton industry, and the catastrophe of the Aral Sea. The SNB agents told Nurullayev that his conclusions about Uzbekistan and everything he taught children during these camps were merely myths, and that spreading this information placed him at risk of being declared an enemy of the state for trying to destabilize the country’s youth.

After the interview, Nurullayev was left alone in a cold room without water, where he was told he had the opportunity to take some time to think about what he’d done. When the agent who had conducted most of the interview returned, he told Nurullayev to return in two days and threatened to punish Nurullayev’s relatives remaining in Uzbekistan if he failed to comply. Before he was allowed to leave, the agent told him to write a detailed statement — to be turned in to the police the following day — about his life, covering ever place he had lived, those with whom he had come in contact, schools he had attended, and countries he had visited.

The interview on 5 January lasted several hours and was conducted by the same SNB agents. The officers questioned Nurullayev extensively about his involvement with a Peace Corps Volunteer that lived with Nurullayev’s family in 2004 and 2005 and who later helped Nurullayev attend college in the United States. The agents claimed the Volunteer and his family work for the CIA and said that their association meant Nurullayev was also a CIA asset. They accused Nurullayev of having received training from the Volunteer on how to create social and political instability in Uzbekistan. The agents further claimed that Nurullayev was selected by the State Department to receive a FLEX scholarship to attend high school in the U.S. in order to receive additional training on how to destabilize Uzbekistan. The agents took down Nurullayev’s U.S. address and the names of everyone with whom he had meaningful contact. They also forced him to give them his email address and password.

The SNB officers then told Nurullayev he had a chance to help himself out of his situation by agreeing to work for the SNB. When he asked whether or not he had a choice, the officers angrily told him that he could choose to do as they told him or he could choose to be found to be an enemy of the state and sentenced to 17 years in prison, telling Nurullayev, “You know what happens to boys like you in prison.”

Nurullayev agreed with everything they demanded after that, signing a statement acknowledging he now works for the SNB, is willingly under their watch, that he will report significant life changes to them, that he will find and report to them any information they demand, and that disclosing this to agreement to U.S. officials would result in him being sentenced to 17 years in prison in Uzbekistan. He was told that he would be required to report back to the SNB in no more than two years. The agents reminded him before he left of the mess he had created and that they were offering him a chance to clean it up.

Once he returned to the United States, Nurullayev says he immediately reported what had taken place to U.S. authorities and disclosed the agreement the SNB made him sign.

He says that Aziz Yuldashev, who is also back in the United States, had almost the same experience with SNB agents in Jizzakh. Yuldashev worked alongside Nurullayev on their organization’s programs in Uzbekistan and was active at the summer camps. He too was questioned extensively about his human rights work and that he was compelled to sign a nearly identical agreement. Like Nurullayev, Yuldashev also reported the incident to U.S. authorities.

Their story, sadly, is far from the worst of tales of harassment and abuse of activists by Uzbekistan’s security services. However, it does highlight the extents to which the SNB go to totally neutralize any and all threats to the regime and their tactics of neutralizing activists and dissidents by forcing them to sign agreements that can compromise their credibility among other activists and frighten them into staying out of Uzbekistan.