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“Hate Rallies” and Public Denunciations

Uzbek authorities have staged public denunciations of independent Muslims and their families, calling primarily on mahalla committees and the official clergy to carry them out. Public denunciations are carefully staged spectacles at which independent Muslims and their families are vilified, humiliated, and called upon to make statements of contrition. They serve to punish and ostracize their victims, alienating them from their local networks of support, and spreading fear among communities about the dangers of involvement in unsanctioned religious activity.

Public denunciations of independent Muslims organized by the Karimov government echoed meetings held during the Soviet era. In particular the gatherings mirrored those in the late 1920s and 1930s that condemned individuals whose behavior was contrary to the goals and dictates of the Communist Party or whose social origins made them “enemies of the people.”⁶³⁸ Attended by ranking party officials, the Soviet-era meetings featured denunciations of fellow community members or co-workers and self-recrimination by participants. The “hate rallies” of present-day Uzbekistan are carefully staged spectacles organized by mahalla committees and city mayors. They are held in school auditoria or other large halls and include participation by police and procuracy officials as well as members of the officially sanctioned clergy. They are an important propaganda exercise in the government’s campaign against independent Muslims. They have also served to make average citizens complicit in the persecution of their friends and neighbors.

Structure and Content of Public Denunciations

Attendance at a public denunciation is obligatory both for its targets—some of whom are awaiting trial on religion-related charges—and for spectators, whom mahalla and other local officials have summoned to the events. Officials’ speeches at the meetings serve as warnings, aimed at frightening people into abandoning religious practices the state finds objectionable or into disavowing relatives who have been branded “enemies.” Officials give general warnings against taking the “wrong” religious path and then vilify the meetings’ subjects as “terrorists” and “extremists.” State officials accuse their targets of being worthless to society, bad parents, and bad neighbors. These public denunciations isolate the subjects from the support networks that their community would otherwise provide. The hundreds of assembled community residents then have a turn at lambasting the targets, sometimes calling for their incarceration or execution. In some cases the targets, often detainees at the time, are forced to endure hours of verbal abuse, but are rarely given a chance to speak in their own defense.

Targets of hate rallies may be those awaiting trial on religion-related charges, or their relatives. Both categories of people are branded “enemies of the state” or “enemies of the people.” Relatives of leading religious dissidents, either missing or in jail, have found themselves the subjects of repeated “hate rallies” that can also involve criticism of their own religious practice, such as the wearing of hijab (Muslim attire ranging from a scarf covering the hair to clothing covering the entire body and face). The subjects of the assembly are called upon to disavow their loved ones, outline their own supposed misdeeds, and to beg for forgiveness not only of their neighbors and the gathered law enforcement agents, but also President Karimov and all of the people of Uzbekistan.

Denunciations Organized by Mahallas and Other Local Officials

An example of the structure and content of a typical “hate rally” was the public denunciation organized by local officials in Namangan against forty-seven-year-old Omina Muidinova, her three sons, and other male relatives on April 5, 2000. These family members were accused of Wahhabism” and charged with attempted overthrow of the state.⁶³⁹ Held in the Namangan mayor’s office, the meeting was presided over by Deputy Mayor A. Lukmanov.⁶⁴⁰ Other officials who convened the meeting included Deputy Minister of Internal Affairs B. R. Parpiev; chief of the Namangan province police department, B. Subkhanov; the mayor of Namangan province, T.A. Jabbarov; Namangan province procurator Kh. Sabirov; and representatives from the Namangan city mahalla committee.

Following a pattern seen in other “hate rallies,” the meeting began with a broad warning to area residents to shun religious trends deemed harmful to the state. Speakers called for the defense of citizens from “religious extremism” and particularly from the influence of the Islamic organization Hizb ut-Tahrir.⁶⁴¹ Officials hailed fidelity to the motherland, condemned her traitors, and warned citizens of the consequences of encroachment on the existing order.⁶⁴²

In the second stage of the “hate rally,” the officials offered a live illustration of the dangers of following unsanctioned religious trends. Omina Muidinova, three of her sons, her brother, and her son-in-law, all of whom had been arrested by police during the preceding months, were brought into the hall in handcuffs. The family was made to stand before the crowd, surrounded by guards, to hear the officials’ accusations against them. One observer commented that the proceeding resembled a court hearing, and indeed it featured charges and judgment but it lacked a defense. The officials charged that Muidinova had conspired, “under the mask of Islam” with “ferocious religious extremists” such as IMU leader Juma Namangani, to establish an Islamic state in Uzbekistan.⁶⁴³ The officials then called on citizens in attendance to give their opinions of Muidinova and her family. Several men stood up to condemn Muidinova, and some of these called even for punishment of her parents. Others demanded that the accused family be executed.⁶⁴⁴ When the officials instructed Muidinova to address the crowd, she said only that her relative, Akmal Ergashev, had persuaded her to become an observant Muslim and that she had subsequently urged others to become observant Muslims, to “embark on the true path of Islam.”⁶⁴⁵ After the rally, Muidinova and her relatives were returned to pre-trial detention. Two months later they were tried and sentenced to prison terms ranging from eleven to thirteen years on charges of Wahhabism and attempt to overthrow the state.

The technique of forced public humiliation has also been used against relatives of detainees. For example, after Imam Iuldashev’s release, in late 1999, the authorities compelled his wife to attend a public denunciation of so-called Wahhabis.

Prior to the public denunciation, local authorities summoned Iuldashev’s wife to two separate meetings at which they privately warned her and other independent Muslims about their religious practices. At the first meeting, at the mahalla center (a meeting house of the neighborhood council) in the Sobir Rakhimov district of Tashkent, the presiding officials included deputy police chief Jamal Suliev and the Sobir Rakhimov district procurator. In all, they had summoned about ten people “on the list,” or registered with police, whom the meeting organizers referred to as “Wahhabis.” The authorities explained that they had been brought there to receive a warning and charged that they were members of religious sects and “people who cover their faces.”⁶⁴⁶ A man introduced as an imam told participants that it was necessary to wear hijab only in Arab countries with desert sand and that Uzbekistan’s climate did not require one to cover one’s face. Moreover, he said, the directive to cover one’s face, to wear hijab, is not written in the Koran.⁶⁴⁷ One participant at the meeting recalled, “[Officer] Suliev scared us all. He said, ‘We have helped the local police officers and they have guns and nightsticks and handcuffs [to use on you], and they can do anything, if you step out of line…’ He said, ‘This meeting is a warning and if you take another step out of line, the next place you’ll be going is Jaslyk.’”⁶⁴⁸

The following day, the same individuals were instructed to visit Muhayo Saidova, from the district mayor’s office, for one-on-one meetings. At these meetings, Saidova required that each person write a note swearing off any involvement with “religious sects.”⁶⁴⁹

Two days later, twenty or so “Wahhabis,” including Iuldashev’s wife, were ordered by the local police officer to appear at the local schoolhouse, where about one hundred local residents also gathered. Presiding over the meeting were Dilbar Guliamova, chair of the central government Women’s Committee; Muhayo Saidova; the district mayor; the district procurator; and representatives from the local mahalla committee.⁶⁵⁰ “One by one, we were called up to say that we were against sects,” recalled a participant. “They made one man take the Koran and swear he was not part of a sect.”⁶⁵¹ Others were directed to ask forgiveness from the assembly, although Imam Iuldashev’s wife was reportedly allowed to leave without being forced to do this.⁶⁵²

During the two-hour public meeting, the procurator focused his comments on well-known imams Obidkhon Kori Nazarov and Tulkin Kori Ergashev, calling them “murderers and terrorists.”⁶⁵³ He charged, “Your leaders, Tulkin Kori and Obid Kori, took your money and used you for terror, they leave blood on your hands, and we must punish them. These leaders must be punished; [otherwise] those who do not understand and follow them will end up answering for them.”⁶⁵⁴

Hate rallies organized against Imam Nazarov’s wife, Munira Nasriddinova, and mother, Mukharramkhon Nazarova, followed a similar line. Nasriddinova described the first public denunciation that the two women were compelled to attend, on February 10, 2000, at a local school:

They called me to the neighborhood meeting. The mahalla organized it. More than three hundred people were there. Most were from Beruni [her neighborhood in Tashkent]. Officials from the district police station and mahalla attended, as well as representatives from mosques, including the imam…Gulamkodir [presumably imam Gulamkodir Mirzaiakubov of the Al-Bukhari mosque in Tashkent]. Jamal Suliev, the deputy chief of the district police station was there. At first, the meeting started with officials calling Hizb ut-Tahrir followers terrorists and then they accused Obidkhon of being against democracy, saying that we [the family] were criminals and against independence.⁶⁵⁵

Nasriddinova said that a second meeting was held on February 17 and that Dilbar Guliamova, the head of the government’s Women’s Committee, and a representative of the Muslim Board of Uzbekistan were among the officials there who spoke against Nazarov and denounced his mother. Nasriddinova told Human Rights Watch:

The head of the mahalla warned our neighbors not to talk to us, or else they would go to jail. At the meeting on the seventeenth, they said that from each mahalla there are already thirty or forty women on a list of people to arrest. Someone from the women’s committee said this and also said that women shouldn’t think that they will not be arrested [just because they are women]. ‘We will arrest the women and put the children in orphanages,’ they threatened.⁶⁵⁶

In addition to issuing their own threats and condemnations, government officials called on others in the crowd to denounce the Nazarovs. Nasriddinova said, “One supposed witness said we hold religious meetings in our home. We now fear they will bring more pressure on us.”⁶⁵⁷

The authorities also called on other subjects of the hate rally to address the gathering and express their contrition. Nasriddinova recalled that during the meeting on February 17, the officials called on a woman named Muiasar Azimjonova, who wore a headscarf with her face uncovered, “They called on her to ask for forgiveness. She instead began to criticize [officer] Suliev, so they turned off the microphone.”⁶⁵⁸ Another young woman from the neighborhood, named Halida, who prayed regularly and wore a headscarf, was also called upon to speak at the meeting.⁶⁵⁹ Nasriddinova said, “They asked Halida why she was on the ‘black list’ and she said, ‘because I wear a headscarf.’ The officials got furious and said she was messing with politics.”⁶⁶⁰

The public denunciations are also attempts to convince individuals, particularly those accused of “extremism,” that they should inform on and condemn others like themselves, in order to show support for the state and official Islam. The elderly “Mukhtabar M.” (not her real name) was released from prison in September 1999 after serving a ten-day administrative sentence for membership in Hizb ut-Tahrir and meeting with other women to discuss Islam. Local police and the mahalla committee in her area called a public meeting to denounce her and Hizb ut-Tahrir members in general.⁶⁶¹ According to Mukhtabar M., all the women in her neighborhood who wore headscarves were summoned to the meeting. There, Tashkent City Imam Anvar Kori announced that all those in hijab were not required to wear this type of dress, and authorities called on those present to locate and report others who wore it. They warned the women that Hizb ut-Tahrir members were “dangerous” and told participants they should fear them and shun relatives who were members.⁶⁶²

While isolating independent Muslims from the rest of the community was evidently a goal of this public denunciation, it was not the result. Mukhtabar M. asserted that her neighbors understood and supported her, “They never scold me and are not afraid to talk to me; they help me.”⁶⁶³

Authorities have organized repeated public denunciations of some families. Female relatives of independent Muslim prisoners staged a series of protests in Andijan in March and April 2001. Local mahalla committees there allegedly responded by intensifying the frequency of public denunciations, described by one Andijan rights activist as “little inquisitions.”⁶⁶⁴ The activist reported that in each neighborhood local authorities had targeted half a dozen relatives of religious prisoners whom they routinely harassed and publicly shamed.⁶⁶⁵

Even after authorities convicted Shukhrat Abdurakhimov, they did not cease persecution of his family. Local government authorities made Abdurakhimov’s mother the subject of public denunciations at three public meetings, organized by the mahalla committee in her neighborhood. At those meetings, officials charged that the family was engaged in anti-state activities and branded Abdurakhimov an “enemy of the state.” “Family members of arrested Muslims live in fear, because they [authorities] follow our every move,” wrote one of Abdurakhimov’s relatives in an international appeal.⁶⁶⁶ Abdurakhimov’s mother was also compelled to report to police and representatives of her mahalla committee regarding her own activities, even her preferred candidate in the presidential elections.⁶⁶⁷ Moreover, according to a person close to the case, the city procurator visited the school where she taught, to ask her supervisor if she was against the state, and then required her to write a statement to her students attesting that her son had “followed a wrong path.”⁶⁶⁸

One woman told Human Rights Watch, “I have three sons in prison—one in Nukus, one in Karshi, and one in Tavaksai. They were accused of being members of Hizb ut-Tahrir...When there was a meeting, they called my sons ‘enemies of the state.’ There were people from the procuracy and the mayor’s office there, and they called me there, and I was the only mother of Hizb ut-Tahrir members present.”⁶⁶⁹ Referring to herself and other mothers of arrested independent Muslims, she added, “We are all afraid.”⁶⁷⁰

The Role of Quasi-official Actors and Groups

Sometimes it is not government officials and clergy who promote public humiliations but representatives of other state-approved entities—operating with at least the tolerance of the state. A young schoolteacher in Andijan told Human Rights Watch that members of a pro-government political party organized a “hate rally” against her because a relative had been arrested for membership in Hizb ut-Tahrir: “After my brother was arrested, I had problems at work. The leader of Fidokarlar [a registered political party] organized a public meeting and called my brother an ‘enemy of the state.’ They said I was from a bad family. They organized the meeting at the school where I work.”⁶⁷¹ The government’s conduct encourages this sort of initiative. A rights activist from the Fergana Valley reported that officers from the Ministry of Internal Affairs and procuracy officials, as well as members of the state-sponsored Komolot youth group (formerly the Young Communist League), regularly attend meetings organized by mahalla committees to denounce independent Muslims.⁶⁷² He said that the meetings usually include announcements of arrests of independent Muslims and warnings to other residents not to follow their example.⁶⁷³

Denunciations in State-Run Mosques

Public denunciations also take place in official mosques, just prior to or after prayer services. In these cases the state-appointed imam makes a general statement warning of the consequences of following the “wrong” religious path and then calls on “volunteers” to come forward to admit their guilt to the congregation and ask for forgiveness. The pool of “volunteers” is, however, comprised of detainees who have been brought to the mosque by police and who sit, in some cases, handcuffed to plain clothes security agents, while waiting their turn at self-denunciation. Judging from the statements of contrition Human Rights Watch was able to obtain, they are highly scripted. Those who “volunteered” to make such speeches had been promised that they would be released in exchange, but in fact some remained in custody after the event, and others were released but rearrested within months or even days, and were subsequently convicted and sent to prison.

Official clergy have on occasion incorporated denunciations of independent Muslims into their religious services. For example, according to a local resident and human rights defender in Fergana city, Imam Tokhir Kori of the state-sanctioned Juma mosque, the largest in that area, called on worshipers at his services to shun “Wahhabis” and members of Hizb ut-Tahrir and to “drive them from our midst.”⁶⁷⁴

A more elaborate example of the role of official clergy appears in the case of six men detained in January 2000 for private study of Islam. They were forced to make public statements of contrition at state-run mosques in exchange for promises that their cooperation would absolve them.⁶⁷⁵ A relative of Murat Kosymov recalled the police manipulation to coerce him to beg for forgiveness before the congregation in exchange for promises of freedom:

He was detained on January 7 for the first time, along with others in this case. They were told, ‘If you ask for forgiveness, the state will forgive you.’ [Police] took them to a mosque and then released them, but later detained them again. The police shamed them on television, where they [also] asked for forgiveness. They said they would let them go.⁶⁷⁶

At the subsequent trial, others described the public shaming. Tokhir Obidov’s attorney pointed out that his client was detained first in May 1998, then again in January 2000, when he was taken to a mosque, interrogated before others, and required to ask for forgiveness, which he did. Then he was detained again in February 2000.⁶⁷⁷ After police allegedly tortured Anvar Mirakhmedov and forced him to confess to false charges, they took him to a series of mosques where he was compelled to call on young people not to follow the path of “Wahhabism.”⁶⁷⁸ Faizullo Saipov told the court that police also had compelled him to give a penitent speech before those assembled for prayer at a mosque, to warn those in attendance of the harmfulness of “Wahhabism” and “extremism.”⁶⁷⁹ Saipov recalled, “The first time we were detained, they said, ‘There are thirty of you, the President knows who you are.’ They took me to meetings three times, and I asked for forgiveness.”⁶⁸⁰

The detainees were brought to a number of mosques for public shaming, among them to the Kokcha mosque in Tashkent. Human Rights Watch obtained a videotape of the imam’s sermon given on January 21, 2000 at the Kokcha mosque and the detainees’ pleas for forgiveness. Police brought the detainees in handcuffs during prayer time; the video shows Imam Rakhmatullo opening the event by pointing out the detainees and plainclothes police in the front row of the assembly. He then proceeded with a markedly political sermon that illuminated his role as state functionary and blurred the line between the mosque and the Ministry of Internal Affairs.⁶⁸¹ Among his comments:

What was the greatest quality that our Prophet Muhammad possessed? He always generously forgave guilt if a guilty person came to him with a confession and asked forgiveness. Even in cases where someone came to him intending to kill him, he called on that person with kind words to become a Muslim and forgave him...Our respected President also possesses these same qualities. Even though criminals, hating our independence, slander the President and work against his policies, if they come to him and ask for forgiveness, regretting what they have done, even if they came back from abroad, the President will say, "I forgive them!" Despite it all he sticks to his conviction. Those who have gone astray can come to the court, to the procuracy, to law enforcement agencies, to their police departments, mahalla committees, or local mosques and ask forgiveness, and the government will forgive them. No one will cause them harm.⁶⁸²

The imam then went on to detail his interview with a recent group of religious detainees on police premises:

A few days ago we were invited to the Tashkent UVD [city police station], where several people detained for distributing leaflets were being held. We talked with them about how it's considered a crime to call for a coup d’etat, and that it is punished with imprisonment of five to twelve years. Then they told us that, wanting to study religion and the Koran, they had started down the wrong path. "Here in the basement we're suffering, our parents and families are suffering... Now we understand that we went astray. It won't happen again. We ask for forgiveness, we repent."⁶⁸³

The next stage of the “sermon” involved a live, public shaming of the detainees in question, introduced by the imam, who presented the men’s experience as a cautionary tale of the dangers of studying Islam outside of the state mosque:

You are all witnesses to the fact that they will in fact, taking the Koran in their hands and swearing in the name of Allah, ask for forgiveness and they will here and now be released from custody. And they will return to their families. If anyone among you wants to study religion, to study Koran, come to the mosque. Our respected imams will teach you Islam, religion, the Koran, and won't take a single som from you for it... Now I will give the floor to our misguided sons.⁶⁸⁴

One detainee told the congregation:

We started some lessons, beginning by learning the Koran and hadith, it then turned into instruction in Wahhabism and we unwittingly fell into this path. Thank you to the authorities who took us and told us that this path which we were on was incorrect... they sat with us for three days without any sort of force and explained to us in a correct way that the path we were on was damaging to our religion and our politics. We came to understand that we had entered onto a mistaken path. After that I would say to my contemporaries that if they were studying these things in secret or were reading unofficial literature that they should repent and turn away from this path. Or they should go to the authorities and repent and appeal to them. Nobody is going to pressure anyone. Here from among us, there are some guys who went and repented; they were then let be, nothing at all happened to them. I stand before you holding the Koran in my hand admitting my fault and I swear before Allah never to return to that path.⁶⁸⁵

The remarks of subsequent detainees followed the same pattern. One man identified as Alisher Zakhidov reiterated Imam Rakhmatullo’s message that private study of Islam was incorrect and that those interested in obtaining Islamic education should turn to the state-run mosques, “We were secretly acquiring knowledge... we later embarked on the Wahhabi path. I swear to Allah that I'm never going to return to that path and if I decide that I'm going to acquire knowledge, like the respected imam said, everyone should go to his local mosque and if this is asked of them the imams will help to the extent that they are able.”⁶⁸⁶

As noted above, the men who expressed their contrition were not all freed exactly as promised. Ibrahim Obidov’s lawyer said that, even after his client’s participation in the Kokcha gathering, police refused to release Obidov until he also asked forgiveness at a public denunciation organized by his mahalla committee, and paid a fine. Less than a month later, on February 10, police detained Obidov again. Forced, according to his lawyer, to “admit to things he did not do,” Obidov was sentenced to ten years in prison on August 21, 2000.⁶⁸⁷