Salima Kadyrova, (b. 1933) has been a lawyer for 40 years and is the deputy head of the Human Rights Initiative Center in Samarkand.  She is a member of the Samarkand Bar Association and has defended the rights of the exiled Erk leader, Muhammad Solih.

Currently the authorities are threatening to revoke Kadyrova’s license to practice law.  At the end of August 2006, a man came to her house saying he wanted to hire her as a lawyer. Despite the fact that they never signed a contract, at the end of September 2006, Kadyrova was called to the local Department of Justice because this man had written a complaint against her. The man, who had tape recorded his conversation with Kadyrova, accused her of seeking to overcharge him for her services. The case is pending.

Addressing President Islam Karimov, Kadyrova says, “I have worked as a lawyer for many years.  In December 2001, I wrote you an open letter in which I pointed out that the Uzbek judicial system is decayed and collapsing before our very eyes, and that the peoples’ rights in Uzbekistan, which constitute the foundation for democracy building, are violated regularly.” Kadyrova was nominated in the campaign “1000 Women for the Nobel Peace Price 2005.”

Fakhriddin Tilloev (b. 1971), from Boisun district, Surkhandaryo province, is head of the unregistered human rights group Free Citizen (Ozod Fukaro), and a member of the Erk party. Previously he was involved with the Independent Human Rights Organization of Uzbekistan. Tilloev monitors trials, works as public defender at trials, and assists people to write complaints. Currently he is researching problems of labor migration from Boisun to Russia, including some cases of potentially wrongful deaths of labor migrants.

Tilloev became interested in human rights in 2000 when he was still working for the local government. That year he was among 200 protestors who voiced dissatisfaction about the province governor’s fixed election to parliament. Six men filed a complaint with a court, but the case was closed after three years without success for Tilloev and the others. This failure did not prevent Tilloev from establishing a human rights group in Surkhandaryo. In May 2005 they were refused registration by the authorities, but continue to work.

In March 2005 Tilloev was detained for five days for allegedly insulting a police officer. In October 2006 police in his home district confiscated, without explanation, his passport and military service document. “I hope that ordinary citizens and human rights defenders will be able to live without pressure in Uzbekistan in the future.”

Ismail Adylov, (b.1950) is a long-time human rights activist from Tashkent. After he was arrested in 1994, he began investigating cases of illegal arrest, monitoring trials, and conducting dozens of interviews with victims of torture and their families. In 1997 he joined the Independent Human Rights Organization of Uzbekistan, which was registered in 2002 shortly before President Karimov traveled to Washington, D.C., to meet with President Bush.

In spring 1999, the Karimov government launched an aggressive campaign against Adylov and his colleagues, apparently aimed at silencing their revelations regarding religious repression and mass violations of human rights by state authorities. In July of that year, Tashkent police took Adylov into custody and raided his home. A court hearing that lasted only three hours and mimicked Soviet-era show trials found him guilty; Adylov was sentenced in September 1999 to six years in prison. For most of the time he was in prison, Adylov was subjected to torture and denied medical treatment. After an international campaign calling for Adylov's release President Karimov finally granted his freedom on July 3, 2001.

Tamara Chikunova, (b. 1948) is chair of the Tashkent-based NGO Mothers against the Death Penalty and Torture. She works toward the abolition of the death penalty in Uzbekistan and around the world, and against the use of torture. She also advocates for the humane treatment of those sentenced to death and their relatives.

Chikunova became involved with human rights in 2000, after she learned of the execution of her son, Dmitry. Since then, Chikunova has been in dialogue with the Uzbek government on abolishing the death penalty. Chikunova, members of her family, and members of her organization have been attacked and detained several times. The organization’s office has been burglarized and its communications tapped. Despite Chikunova’s efforts to register Mothers against the Death Penalty and Torture, Uzbek authorities twice rejected the organization’s registration application.

Chikunova is an active member of the World Coalition against the Death Penalty. She and her organization have won several international awards, including the 2005 Nuremberg International Human Rights Award and Golden Doves for Peace (2004).

Chikuna is firm and outspoken in her opposition to the death penalty. “I do not work for medals but to remind everybody that we are all human beings. I do not want to see mothers crying because they have lost their loved ones,” she says.

Surat Ikramov, (b.1945), from Tashkent, is head of the Initiative Group of Independent Human Rights Defenders. He specializes in trial monitoring and reports regularly on arbitrary detention, torture, and political and religion-related arrests in Tashkent and other parts of Uzbekistan.

Ikramov’s interest in human rights began with economic and social rights after his private business had problems with the authorities in 1995. “I did not understand anything,” he says, looking back. “I wrote many complaints but did not achieve anything,” In 1999 he started to seek help from human rights organizations and became more aware about the human rights situation in the country. The sheer number of arbitrary arrests and unfair sentences convinced him to set up his own human rights group in February 2002.

In August 2003 Ikramov was attacked and beaten by four masked men. They drove him to the outskirts of Tashkent, threw him to the ground, and tried to burn his car. He was severely injured. After this incident Ikramov was offered political asylum abroad, but chose to remain in his country. “I continued to work on principle.” Ikramov does not understand why the authorities treat him as a threat, he says. “I am not dangerous. I do what everybody should do, including the state.”

Vasila Inoiatova, (b.1956) is from Tashkent and is chair of Ezgulik – one of the two registered human rights organizations in Uzbekistan. Ezgulik has branches throughout Uzbekistan. The organization was registered in 2003, on the eve of the annual meeting of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, which took place in Tashkent.

Inoiatova became active in the civil movement Birlik in 1989, and is now secretary general of the Birlik political party. “Finally somebody was addressing issues everybody was interested in: independence from Russia, sovereignty, and the status of the Uzbek language,” she explains. In 1992 Inoiatova joined the Human Rights Society of Uzbekistan. A year later, the Supreme Court sentenced her to two years in prison for insulting the president for an article she had published about the killing of about 100 students by Uzbek governmental forces in 1992.  She was released under an amnesty.  In 1994 she was held for 16 days in administrative detention to prevent her from travelling to the United States.

After the mass arrests of independent Muslims that followed the February 16, 1999, bombings in Tashkent, Inoiatova became involved in documenting cases of religious persecution. “In Uzbekistan it is very difficult to solve certain problems because the government itself causes these problems. Human rights violations are one of these problems,” says Inoiatova. Ezgulik reports these violations on a regular basis in letters sent directly to the Uzbek government and in other statements that it distributes widely and posts to its website.

Makhbuba Kasymova, (b.1949) is a former teacher from Tashkent who for some years was active with the Independent Human Rights Organization of Uzbekistan (NOPChU). She later left the organization to work independently. She focuses on the issue of female prisoners in Uzbekistan. 

During the perestroika era, Kasymova became a member of the Birlik social movement and was among the many opposition members who were harassed in the early 1990s in connection with their work. Kasymova became involved in human rights as she monitored the waves of arrests that followed the murders of several policemen in the Ferghana Valley in 1997 and the February 1999 bombings in Tashkent.

In an effort to discredit Kasymova’s human rights activities, police brought her before her  local neighborhood committee in May 1999, where 200 people had come to publicly denounce her.  Kasymova was reportedly pointed out to relatives of victims of the February bombings situated in the crowd as “one of the sort of people who killed your sons.” In an unfair trial in September 1999, Kasymova was found guilty on charges of misappropriation of funds and concealing or failing to report a crime. She was given a five- year prison sentence but was released in December 2000 as the result of an international campaign on her behalf. Since her release, Kasymova has continued her work.

Akzam Turgunov, Akzam Turgunov (b. 1952), from Tashkent, heads the unregistered organization Mazlum (The Oppressed). His work focuses on the rights of political and religious prisoners, torture, and public education. He monitors trials and works as a public defender on a regular basis.

Turgunov started human rights work in 1994. “We met regularly in a small café near Independence Square. It was at that cafe that we came up with the idea to establish the Independent Human Rights Organization of Uzbekistan.” Turgunov’s human rights activities were inspired by the work of Soviet dissident Andrei Sakharov and the Polish Solidarity movement. “I was interested in human rights before I knew what human rights were,” he says.

In 1998 Turgunov was sentenced to six years in prison on politically motivated charges of “abuse of office” and “official negligence,” related to his work on his neighborhood committee to set up private alternatives to services that are supposed to be provided by the state. He was released under an amnesty in May 2000. In September of the same year he founded Mazlum. Since then, he and members of his family have been intimidated and harassed many times. For instance, in 2005 he was charged with insulting a woman at a bazaar, but the case was ultimately dismissed.

Turgunov strives to improve the human rights situation in Uzbekistan. “If everybody keeps silent, the situation will worsen,” he says. Recently, Turgunov was denied an exit visa by the Uzbek authorities and therefore cannot leave the country.

Elena Urlaeva (b. 1957), from Tashkent, is involved with the Human Rights Alliance of Uzbekistan. She became interested in human rights issues in 1998 after her brother’s custody battle for his children. “When I supported him I met many people who complained about injustice,” she says. She later began working with Tolib Yakubov, chair of the Human Rights Society of Uzbekistan, after which she was fired from her job as an electrician at a television station and has since monitored human rights in Uzbekistan.

Her main activities include reporting on arbitrary police conduct, such as arbitrary detention and torture, trial monitoring, and compiling information about the state’s use of enforced psychiatric treatment as a means to silence critics.

Urlaeva has been harassed and detained many times. In 2001, 2002, and 2005 Uzbek authorities subjected her to forced psychiatric treatment, including the administration of powerful antipsychotic drugs. In October 2005 a court ordered her to undergo six months of outpatient psychiatric treatment. In November 2006 the court renewed that decision without Urlaeva’s knowledge or providing her with a copy of the ruling. As a result, Urlaeva is obligated to meet once a month with a doctor at a psychiatric clinic and is listed in the local police registry as mentally ill.

In March 2006 Urlaeva’s husband was beaten up at a bus stop while waiting for her to return from monitoring a trial. Urlaeva herself is detained and questioned for several hours by police or secret service on a regular basis.

“My human rights activities give me satisfaction and I fight to stop the arbitrariness of the police and show that trials are based on fabricated accusations,” she says.