DISSIDENT POET JUMAEV SENTENCED TO INTERNAL EXILE

C O N F I D E N T I A L TASHKENT 000463 SIPDIS SIPDIS E.O. 12958: DECL: 04/18/2018 TAGS: PHUM PGOV UZ SUBJECT: DISSIDENT POET JUMAEV SENTENCED TO INTERNAL EXILE REF: TASHKENT 127 Classified By: Political Officer Tim Buckley for reasons 1.4 (B,D) ¶1. (C) On April 15 Reuters reported that dissident poet Yusuf Jumaev was found guilty in a Bukhara court of discrediting the authorities, resisting arrest, and harming a police officer. The charges stem from a December incident in which Jumaev, who was protesting his son's arrest, allegedly drove around displaying a placard calling for Karimov's resignation, and ran down two militsiya officers (reftel). Jumaev was sentenced to five years in a minimum-security halfway house, where he will have some freedom but be subject to monitoring. The information was confirmed by the Human Rights Watch Researcher in Uzbekistan, Igor Vorontsov, who closely followed the case from Tashkent and spoke with human rights activist Surat Ikramov, who attended the trial. ¶2. (C) A conflicting article on uznews.net on April 15 quoted Jumaev's attorney, Ruhiddin Kamilov, as saying Jumaev was sentenced to five years in a "strict-regime prison," but Vorontsov said the Reuters version was accurate and that Kamilov was misquoted. Kamilov was apparently dismissed by his client during the trial, at which time he was removed from the courtroom and did not witness the remainder of the proceedings in the one and one-half day trial. Jumaev's son, Bobur, was recently given a three-year suspended sentence. ¶3. (C) Ikramov told Reuters the sentence was milder than expected. Vorontsov agreed that it could have been worse but added that Human Rights Watch "protests this conviction" on the grounds that "this person should not have been arrested in the first place." Jumaev plans to appeal the ruling, according to Vorontsov, which Human Rights Watch supports. Comment: -------------- ¶4. (C) The domestic exile sentence is a throwback to Soviet times and is not something we have seen here in human rights cases. It does not strike us as significant in terms of human rights observance, but it is of course a relief that Jumaev will not serve in an Uzbek prison and be subjected to the routine abuse and disease prevalent there. We are interested in seeing whether the use of internal exile will become more common. The Uzbek Government has, to a certain degree, created a problem for itself in the past few years, by driving an increasing number of political opposition and human rights activists (often the same people, here) into self-imposed external exile. Abroad, these individuals have become significantly more effective in mounting and coordinating opposition activities, as demonstrated most recently by the campaign in Europe to boycott Uzbek cotton products. NORLAND