UZBEKISTAN: ACTIVIST REPORTS ATTACKS ON HERSELF AND ADOPTED

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E.O. 12958: DECL: 2019/04/27
TAGS: PHUM PGOV PREF PREL SOCI UZ
SUBJECT: UZBEKISTAN: ACTIVIST REPORTS ATTACKS ON HERSELF AND ADOPTED
CHILD

CLASSIFIED BY: Richard Fitzmaurice, P/E Officer, Department of State;
REASON: 1.4(B),(D)


1. (C) Summary: On April 23, poloff met with Human Rights Alliance
activist Elena Urlaeva, who reported being attacked by two unknown
assailants on April 15 after receiving threatening phone calls for
weeks demanding that she leave Uzbekistan. She also reported that
her adopted 5-year old son was attacked on April 22 by an unknown
older child. Urlaeva appeared to be uninjured and said that her
son was recovering. It is possible that, as speculated by Urlaeva
and Human Rights Watch (HRW),the attack on April 15 was
retaliation for her activism. Still, Urlaeva's description of
event does not entirely make sense. Urlaeva is highly emotional
and has reported similar attacks on a more regular basis than other
activist in Uzbekistan. End summary.



ACTIVIST REPORTABLY ATTACKED BY TWO UNKNOWN ASSAILANTS

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2. (C) On April 22, poloff met with Human Rights Alliance
activist Elena Urlaeva, who reported being attacked outside her
Tashkent apartment by two unknown assailants on the morning of
April 15. On the day of the attack, she said that her husband
Mansur left their apartment at 8 am and observed two unknown young
men dressed in black and wearing sunglasses (despite a steady
downpour of rain outside) standing in their apartment building's
ground floor stairwell. Mansur reportedly used his cell phone to
call Urlaeva and warn her about the two men.




3. (C) Urlaeva left the apartment with her five-year old adopted
son at 9 am, and was then reportedly attacked by the two men as she
was leaving the apartment building. One of the men grabbed her
from behind, and then the two men hit her on the head and back.
One of the men allegedly wielded a knife and cut her jacket.
According to her, the attack lasted for approximately seven minutes
and left her with bruises on her head and back (Note: Poloff saw no
evidence of bruising on Urlaeva's head. Urlaeva appeared to be in
no worse health than when he saw her last in December 2008. End
note.) While attacking her, the men screamed and asked her why she
did not leave Uzbekistan. She screamed during the attack, but none
of her neighbors came out to help her. She described one of the
attackers as ethnically Uzbek and the other as ethnically Russian.
The two were approximately 25 to 30 years old, short but
well-built, and used "jargon" which suggested to her that they
might have been drug-users or "hooligans." She reported that a car
that she believed belonged to the National Security Service (NSS)
was outside her apartment during the attack. The incident was
later reported by the independent Uznews.net website and in an
April 17 Human Rights Watch (HRW) press release.




4. (C) After the attack, Urlaeva said she immediately went to the
local police station to complain about the incident. The police
officers wrote down her description of events and said they would
investigate and try to find the two men. Urlaeva said that she had
so far heard nothing more from the police.



ACTIVIST REPORTS SURVEILLANCE, HARRASSING CALLS BEFORE ATTACK

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5. (C) Urlaeva said the attack was preceded by anonymous phone
calls that she received at her home starting around the end of

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March. She reported receiving the calls about once a day,
involving an unknown male voice asking her why she had not yet left
Uzbekistan and warning her that she could be attacked by
"drug-users or hooligans." Three days before the attack, Urlaeva
was reportedly closely followed by two cars. Urlaeva said the
threatening phone calls have continued since the attack. She also
said that a man named Ali Saidaliyev, who was reportedly detained
after Urlaeva gave him 40 copies of an anti-Karimov pamphlet and
later blamed her for his arrest (see para 9),was hanging around
outside her apartment and threatening her.



ADOPTED SON OF ACTIVIST REPORTABLY ATTACKED ON APRIL 23

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6. (C) Urlaeva also reported that on April 22, her 5-year old
adopted son was attacked with a stick by an older child. She said
that her son left their apartment at 6:30 pm and returned a short
while later with a large, bleeding welt on his forehead. Her son
reported that he was hit on the head with a stick by an unknown
older child. After the incident, Urlaeva brought her son to a
local hospital, but upset with the lack of medical care available,
returned home with her son. She said that her son was recuperating
in bed and expected him to recover in a few days.




7. (C) Urlaeva allowed the possibility that the attack on her son
was unrelated to her own activities, but speculated that there
could be some connection due to the fact that it occurred shortly
after the April 15 attack. She explained that the child was that
of her husband's sister, who was unable to raise the child herself
because of "mental illness."



ACTIVIST SPECULATES ON POSSIBLE MOTIVES

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8. (C) Urlaeva noted that on the day she was attacked, she was
planning to attend a hearing in a civil court case launched by
Natalya Mamadjanova, who is suing several police officers from the
Chilanzar and Mirzo-Ulugbek police stations for allegedly forcing
her to sign over her apartment in downtown Tashkent to them two
years ago. Urlaeva said that she was approached for assistance by
Mamadjanova, who allegedly works in the Presidential Apparatus
(Comment: How someone who reportedly worked in the Presidential
Apparatus, the most-powerful government body in Uzbekistan, could
be swindled out of her apartment by a bunch low-ranking district
cops, and why that person would then approach a human rights
activist like Urlaeva, who is best known for her difficulties with
authorities, for assistance is entirely unclear. End comment.)
Urlaeva speculated that the attack on her on April 15 might have
been an attempt to prevent her from attending the latest hearing of
the trial.




9. (C) Urlaeva also speculated that the attacks could have been
motivated by her frequent organization of anti-government pickets
in Tashkent and her production and distribution of anti-Karimov
pamphlets. She reported that the Human Rights Alliance was forced
to leave its office last year after one of its members, Yusup
Imamov, began to harass and threaten other members. Afterwards,
Urlaeva reported moving a Xerox copier machine that the Alliance

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purchased with U.S. Embassy Democracy Commission funds in 2007 to
her own apartment, which she is now using to produce anti-Karimov
pamphlets accusing the President of "crimes against humanity,
genocide, and ordering the killing of innocent protesters at
Andijon in 2005" (Note: The Human Rights Alliance received a
Democracy Commission grant in 2007 to support their general human
rights reporting, not to produce such pamphlets. End note.)
Urlaeva explained that she distributes the pamphlets to other
Alliance members and the general public.



BACKGROUND ON HUMAN RIGHTS ALLIANCE

--------------




10. (C) Urlaeva is the most prominent activist of the Human Rights
Alliance, a motley group of aging activists and relatives of
prisoners, which, until recently, received almost all of its
financial support from Free Farmer opposition Party Leader Nigara
Khidoyatova and the Sunshine Coalition, which is now led by Gulam
Umarov, the son of imprisoned Coalition founder Sanjar Umarov
(septel). While the Alliance has done some human rights reporting,
including monitoring the 2007 presidential election and the use of
child labor during the cotton harvest, the organization mostly
organizes small-scale protests (never numbering more than 10 or 15
participants, mostly Alliance members) in Tashkent on behalf of
political prisoners, including Sanjar Umarov, and then reporting on
the crackdown on its members which inevitably follows such
protests. In poloff's experience, the Alliance is the most
disorganized and least professional human rights groups operating
in Tashkent.



OTHER ALLIANCE ACTIVISTS RECENTLY REFUSED, GRANTED ASYLUM

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11. (C) In 2008, two other Human Rights Alliance members, Akhtam
Shaymardanov and Abdillo Tojiboy ugli, left Uzbekistan and applied
for political asylum with the United Nations High Commissioner for
Refugees (UNHCR) offices outside of Uzbekistan, claiming that they
were persecuted after attempting to run as candidates in the 2007
December presidential election in Uzbekistan. At the time, poloff
saw no evidence that either had been threatened for his activism.
Tojiboy ugli was denied political asylum by UNHCR and has since
returned to Uzbekistan and continued his activism. Poloff has not
heard anything recently from Shaymardanov, but Urlaeva on April 24
reported that Shaymardanov had been granted political asylum and
was recently resettled to the United States.



URLAEVA STILL VISITED BY MENTAL HEALTH PRACTIOTIONERS

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12. (C) Urlaeva reported that she is still visited at home once a
month by mental health practitioners, who have the power to
recommend that she be forcibly remanded to a mental health
institution. According to HRW, Urlaeva was subject to forced
psychiatric treatment in 2001, 2002, and 2005, where she was given
powerful antipsychotic drugs. In 2005, a court ordered that she be
listed in the local police registry as mentally ill and required
that she meet once a month with a doctor at a local psychiatric

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clinic.



COMMENT

--------------




13. (C) It is possible that, as Urlaeva and HRW speculate, the two
attacks reported by Urlaeva were in retaliation for her human
rights activism. Still, Urlaeva's description of events does not
entirely add up. Despite claiming that she was attacked and punched
by the men for seven minutes, poloff saw no evidence that Urlaeva
was injured. It is also unclear why her husband would be concerned
enough to phone Urlaeva to warn her about the two men outside their
apartment, but then not offer to walk her outside of the building,
despite the fact that they were allegedly receiving threatening
phone calls on a daily basis that she could be attacked by
"drug-users or hooligans."




14. (C) While Uzbek authorities have used the Soviet-era practice
of forcing activists into psychiatric detention, we also have
reasons to believe that Urlaeva's mental health issues are not
entirely imaginary. One of poloff's predecessors related an
incident that occurred shortly after the mailing of the "anthrax
letters" in the United States in 2001, when Urlaeva reportedly
walked into the Uzbek Parliament carrying a bag of white powder.
Several times over the past year, she has reported being attacked
by "drunk gypsies" while leading pickets in Tashkent. Last fall,
she said that her husband attacked her as part of a government
provocation. In February 2008, she reported being attacked at the
Tashkent train station on her way to monitor a trial of religious
extremists in Bukhara. In 2007, she reported being attacked on
several other occasions. In total, Urlaeva has reported been
attacked far more times than any other activist in Uzbekistan in
recent years. While we are not dismissing the possibility that the
recent attacks occurred and were some sort of provocation, we also
note that Urlaeva is highly emotional and might be exaggerating
some incidents.




15. (C) In addition, Urlaeva's claim that unknown individuals are
demanding that she leave Uzbekistan does not generally track with
what we have observed to be the government's general reluctance to
allow activists to leave the country. On the contrary, Uzbek
authorities have gone to great lengths to prevent human rights
activists from leaving Uzbekistan, including routinely denying them
exit visas. On several occasions, Uzbek authorities have issued
Interpol arrest warrants for Uzbek human rights and opposition
activists abroad and have tried to have them forcibly extradited
back to Uzbekistan on various charges. We believe that such
efforts are aimed at attempting to limit the ability of government
opponents to criticize the regime from abroad.
NORLAND