Jan 24, 2002: Text of report by banned Uzbek opposition
Birlik web site on 22 January People had known days in advance that the
relatives of those put in prison convicted of belonging to [the banned Islamic
party] Hezb-e Tahrir were gathering in the centre of the Chorsu bazaar in [the
Uzbek capital] Tashkent at 1000 hours [local time, 0500 gmt] on the morning of
21 January. That day the Radio Liberty station and BBC correspondents, a
representative of Internews and human rights defender Vasila Inoyat [also known
as Vasila Inoyatova] arrived at the scene. The bazaar was full of police with
Interior Ministry and National Security Service buses, cars and countless
officers deployed at intervals of 10 metres.
These tried to prevent protesters gathering by detaining every woman in a
headscarf who entered the bazaar. They even took some of them away in buses to
an unknown destination. An incident happened in the meantime. The journalists
found themselves encircled by gypsy women who make their living by stealing,
extorting and palm reading in the bazaar.
There were no more than 20 of them at first. Some of them would shout swear
words at journalists and others would murmur and plead: "Please, go away.
Police have taken our cigarette boxes away and said we would get them back if
we could drive you out. Our children are at home hungry, please, show mercy and
go away." Soon after some women who, judging from appearances, had some
training began to join the gypsies. They were behaving very aggressively. In an
attempt to avoid an argument with this crowd the journalists tried to back up and
get out of the bazaar.
As they were doing so, the crowd started to beat a woman wearing a headscarf
who then asked Vasila to come to her protection. The violent crowd, now of over
100, turned on them both and began to beat them up. Vasila, who came close to passing
out from the beatings, was rescued from the crowd by a Birlik member called
Nabi-aka [term of respect] who happened to be passing by at that time. But the
other woman kept getting battered for quite a while. The scene of police
officers looking on calmly as the innocent woman was having the living
daylights beaten out of her was much more horrific than that of the violence of
the crowd.