ALMATY, Sept 27 (Reuters) - Uzbek police detained dissident writer Nurulloh Muhammad Raufkhon as he returned to the Central Asian country from Turkey on Wednesday, his wife told Reuters.

Gulnara Otakhonova said by telephone from Tashkent that police had escorted her husband, handcuffed, out of the airport and taken him to a police station.

She said police only told her where they were taking Raufkhon, without explaining the reason for his detention or allowing her to talk to him.

The government of late President Islam Karimov put Raufkhon on its security blacklist last year after he published a book criticising Karimov.

The move forced Raufkhon, who was in Turkey at the time, into a de facto exile.

Having been president for a quarter of a century, Karimov died last September. His successor Shavkat Mirziyoyev last month ordered the removal of 16,000 people from the blacklist, prompting Raufkhon to return.

Karimov was derided by Western governments as a dictator who violated human rights, but for many people in Uzbekistan, a mainly Muslim ex-Soviet state which borders Afghanistan, he is the only head of state they have ever known. (Reporting by Olzhas Auyezov; Editing by Simon Cameron-Moore) </s> related media assets (image or videos) available. Click to see the gallery.

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Uzbek police detained dissident writer Nurulloh Muhammad Raufkhon as he returned to the Central Asian country from Turkey on Wednesday, his wife told Reuters.

ALMATY: Uzbek police detained dissident writer Nurulloh Muhammad Raufkhon as he returned to the Central Asian country from Turkey on Wednesday, his wife told Reuters.

Gulnara Otakhonova said by telephone from Tashkent that police had escorted her husband, handcuffed, out of the airport and taken him to a police station.

She said police only told her where they were taking Raufkhon, without explaining the reason for his detention or allowing her to talk to him.

The government of late President Islam Karimov put Raufkhon on its security blacklist last year after he published a book criticising Karimov.

The move forced Raufkhon, who was in Turkey at the time, into a de facto exile.

Having been president for a quarter of a century, Karimov died last September. His successor Shavkat Mirziyoyev last month ordered the removal of 16,000 people from the blacklist, prompting Raufkhon to return.

Karimov was derided by Western governments as a dictator who violated human rights, but for many people in Uzbekistan, a mainly Muslim ex-Soviet state which borders Afghanistan, he is the only head of state they have ever known. </s> ALMATY, Sept 27 (Reuters) - The first prominent dissident to return to Uzbekistan since the death of its long-time leader was detained on arrival on Wednesday, putting under scrutiny efforts by its new president to show the country in a more liberal light.

Uzbek police took writer Nurulloh Muhammad Raufkhon, 62, away in handcuffs after he landed at Tashkent airport, his wife told Reuters.

She said a police officer told her that banned material - which could refer to audio or video recordings as well as literature - had been found at their house, and advised her to hire a lawyer.

Raufkhon had been in self-imposed exile in Turkey since spring 2016, when he was placed on a security blacklist after publishing a book that criticised former leader Islam Karimov.

Karimov, held responsible by Western governments for systematic human rights violations during his 25 years in power, died last September.

His successor, Shavkat Mirziyoyev, has sought to present himself as a more liberal leader, and this month Raufkhon told Reuters in an interview that, despite harbouring some misgivings, he would soon return home.

In an open letter to Mirziyoyev last week, Raufkhon said his safe return would "suit the country which is reassuring itself in front of the world community as free and fair since you came to power".

Raufkhon, 62, is the first prominent dissident to return to Uzbekistan, a mainly Muslim ex-Soviet state which borders Afghanistan, following Karimov's death.

His wife, Gulnara Otakhonova, said by telephone that she and their son had waited for several hours at the airport before seeing Raufkhon escorted outside in handcuffs, to be taken to a police station.

She said police only told her where they were taking Raufkhon, without explaining the reason for his detention or allowing her to talk to him.

As she waited outside the police station later in the day, a police officer told her to hire a lawyer.

Mirziyoyev last month ordered the removal of 16,000 people, including Raufkhon, from the blacklist.

But shortly after that, the writer's name appeared on a public list of wanted criminals, from which it was subsequently removed by district officials. (Reporting by Olzhas Auyezov; Editing by John Stonestreet) </s> ALMATY (Reuters) - The first prominent dissident to return to Uzbekistan since the death of its long-time leader was detained on arrival on Wednesday, his wife said, raising questions about the new president’s efforts to change the country’s image.

FILE PHOTO: Uzbek writer Nurulloh Muhammad Raufkhon is pictured in Istanbul, Turkey, September 16, 2017. REUTERS/Murad Sezer/File Photo

Uzbek police took writer Nurulloh Muhammad Raufkhon away in handcuffs after he landed at Tashkent airport, and sent him to jail after questioning, Gulnara Otakhonova told Reuters in tears.

Officers told her to bring him clothes and a lawyer but did not say what he was charged with, she added.

The interior ministry in mainly Muslim ex-Soviet state bordering Afghanistan did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Raufkhon had been in self-imposed exile in Turkey since 2016, when he was placed on a security blacklist after publishing a book that criticized former leader Islam Karimov.

Karimov, held responsible by Western governments for systematic human rights violations during his 25 years in power, died last September.

His successor, Shavkat Mirziyoyev, has sought to present himself as a more liberal leader, and this month Raufkhon told Reuters in an interview that, despite harboring some misgivings, he would soon return home.

In an open letter to Mirziyoyev last week, Raufkhon said his safe return would “suit the country which is repackaging itself in front of the world community as free and fair since you came to power”.

Improving Tashkent’s image could help Mirziyoyev forge closer ties with the West and attract foreign investment to modernize the economy which has struggled to create enough jobs, forcing millions of Uzbeks to look for work abroad.

BLACKLIST

Raufkhon’s wife , said by telephone that she and their son had waited for several hours at the airport before seeing Raufkhon escorted outside in handcuffs, then taken to a police station.

As she waited outside the police station later in the day, a police officer told her to hire a lawyer.

In the evening, police told her they were taking Raufkhon to jail and instructed her to bring clothes for him, still without stating any charges, Otakhonova said.

Steve Swerdlow, Uzbekistan researcher for Human Rights Watch, called Raufkhon’s detention “troubling, particularly given reports authorities had informed him about his rehabilitation and the various steps President Mirziyoyev has taken to show this is a new political era in Uzbekistan”.

Mirziyoyev last month ordered the removal of 16,000 people, including Raufkhon, from the blacklist.

But some of his reforms announced since the December election have suffered from setbacks or delays caused, according to Uzbekistan-based foreign diplomats, by interventions of Karimov-era security boss Rustam Inoyatov with whom Mirziyoyev effectively shares power. </s> In a recent article, I honed in on Uzbekistan’s notable reengagement with the international community, particularly its budding embrace of multilateral cooperation on top of bettering bilateral relations with its neighbors.

Changing the tone of external relations is one thing; domestic reform and shifts in managing human rights are another issue.

Regional experts remain rightfully circumspect about how much Uzbekistan is really changing and whether the door that seems to be opening will remain open and under what circumstances.

The release of a handful of political prisoners is weighed against the dozens more still in jail; plans to shift cotton fields to fruit and vegetables are contrasted with reports of continued use of forced labor — followed by news that students and teacher had been ordered out of the fields.

The case of Uzbek writer Nurullo Otakhonov, who uses the pen name Nurulloh Muhammad Raufkhon, is illustrative of both caution and optimism when it comes to Uzbekistan’s progress, particularly with regard to human rights. Caution, in this case, trumps optimism.

Raufkhon’s plan to return to Uzbekistan after being removed from a massive blacklist (along with thousands of others who were reportedly cleaned off the lists), was profiled recently by Reuters. The article highlighted the unease which Uzbek exiles continue to feel toward their homeland.

“They would have come back in an instant, but what stands in their way is uncertainty about what is going to happen to them upon return,” Raufkhon told Reuters last week.

This week, Reuters reported that Raufkhon was detained upon landing in Tashkent. So much for uncertainty about what is going to happen if exiles return.

As Eurasianet reports, Uzbek President Shavkat Mirziyoyev had told a group of U.S.-based Uzbek expats that he supported and encouraged their return to the country.

If Raufkhon was to be a test case for such returns, the country failed in a very high-profile way. Uzbek expats — for example, the more than 55,000 Uzbekistan-born persons living in the United States and the similar number residing in Turkey — are unlikely to try their luck at returning having seen what happened to Raufkhon.

Mirziyoyev has sought to cast himself as a reformer. Those looking closely, however, would note that to date most of the presented reform efforts target economic rather than human rights issues. Yes, Uzbekistan welcomed in its first Human Rights Watch delegation in more than a decade recently and also its first-ever visit by a UN High Commissioner on Human Rights. But, such visits and the attendant discussions are starting points — talk not action — and the more critical observers may cast them as placating moves, done for image not substance.

A tightly controlled, authoritarian system cannot be overturned in a year. More importantly, the people in positions of power — from the very top, down to local officials — would have to reorient how they exercise their power, how they understand the relationship between people and the state.

One recent incident underscores this issue. A video appeared online showing the mayor of Saikhunabad district berating — yelling at and hitting — the local school principals, apparently, as Eurasianet put it, “for failing to organize sufficiently elaborate celebrations for Independence Day.” The mayor had been “rapped on the knuckles by his superior. He in turn decided to take out his frustration on his underlings.” Reportedly, the Uzbek General Prosecutor’s Office said it would investigate the mayor, though regional observers posit that this has more to do with the outrage generated by the video than the actions themselves.

The state system in Uzbekistan — developed under Karimov, with Mirziyoyev in the prime minister’s seat for more than a decade — has long been run on fear and subservience, engendering a state which eschews criticisms that move up the chain of power, rather than down. Raufkhon’s work was critical of the status quo in Uzbekistan since independence, earning him the ire of the state and leading to his exile in Turkey. Such an atmosphere cannot be cleared quickly, especially because those who have benefited from the system continue to run it.

Changing direction in any meaningful fashion will step on good number of toes that have long been comfortable in their position, and the power of those positions.

In early September, Mirziyoyev shuffled some key security posts. Karimov’s defense minister, Qobul Berdiyev, was replaced with Abdusalom Azizov. Azizov had been appointed interior minister soon after Mirziyoev became president. His position as interior minister was filled with another of Mirziyoyev’s allies, Pulat Bobojonov. Bobojonov had most recently been a regional governor, but back between 2006-2011 he was chief prosecutor in Jizzakh region, from which Mirziyoyev hails.

One security figure left in place, however, was Rustam Inoyatov, the head of the SNB state security service (the heirs to the Soviet KGB). Inoyatov has long been described as a very powerful individual in Uzbekistan and before Karimov’s death was always among those short-listed by observers to take over when he died. According to Reuters, Inoyatov is the only Karimov-era senior security official still in office.

What happens next in Raufkhon’s case will be critical, not just for him and his family, but those watching both internal political dynamics in Uzbekistan and those concerned with human rights. Will he be released with a mea culpa from Mirziyoyev? Will the detention be pinned on an underling and a mistake? Will he disappear into detention indefinitely? The real question — how and why this happened — may not be answered publicly or satisfactorily at all. </s> Uzbek prison guards line up in Jaslik jail some 1,000 km west from the capital Tashkent, September 29, 2003. REUTERS/Shamil Zhumatov

GENEVA (Reuters) - Torture is rife in prisons and police stations in Uzbekistan, where activists are rounded up and routinely mistreated, the U.N. torture watchdog said on Friday.

It cited “numerous, ongoing and consistent allegations” that detainees in the ex-Soviet state were tortured, including by rape and sexual violence, in order to extract confessions. Some alleged abuses had resulted in deaths in custody.

The U.N. Committee against Torture called on Uzbekistan to carry out prompt, impartial and effective investigations into all allegations of torture and punish those responsible.

The government of President Islam Karimov should report back within a year on its progress in wiping out “widespread torture” and arbitrary imprisonment of human rights defenders and journalists imprisoned in retaliation for their work, it said.

There were also substantiated reports that Uzbek women who have given birth to two or more children, particularly in rural areas, have been “subjected to sterilization procedures without informed consent”, according to the U.N. watchdog.

Karimov brooks no dissent and has ruled his mainly Muslim Central Asian nation of 30 million for more than two decades.

However, Akmal Saidov, chairman of the National Human Rights Centre of Uzbekistan who led its delegation, and said during the watchdog’s review that numerous complaints of torture raised were “unfounded”.

He accused the committee of being corrupted by information provided by “certain politically biased non-governmental organizations”.

Amnesty International accused Russia, Ukraine and the five Central Asian states, including Uzbekistan, in July of colluding in abductions and unlawful transfers of asylum-seekers and refugees back to Central Asia where they faced the risk of torture. Russian and Uzbek officials were not available for comment at that time.

Referring to Uzbekistan, the committee voiced concern, without elaborating, at “allegations that some individuals extradited from neighboring countries have been subjected to torture and others detained incommunicado”.

The U.N. experts said the International Committee of the Red Cross had halted its prison visits in Uzbekistan in April, leaving an absence of external monitoring. They voiced deep concern at conditions at Jaslyk detention facility in the north, which some activist groups have named “The House of Torture”.

The ICRC, an independent aid agency, had said its terms were not respected, including being able to speak to detainees in private about conditions of detention.

The U.N. panel also aired allegations it had received that Uzbek detainees were “frequently denied access to a lawyer of their choice independent of state authority”.

It said lawyers in Uzbekistan were not sufficiently independent from the Justice Ministry and that judges were not permitted to assess the legality of detention.

The U.N. watchdog, composed of 10 independent experts, examined the records of nine countries including Uzbekistan during a four-week meeting ending on Friday. It was Uzbekistan’s first review since 2007. </s> A photojournalist who has been in prison for nearly five years since his arrest for covering a demonstration in Cairo has been selected to receive this year’s press freedom prize from the United Nations cultural body UNESCO, the UN said on Monday.

An independent jury of media professionals selected Mahmoud Abu Zeid, known as Shawkan, for the 2018 UNESCO/Guillermo Cano Press Freedom Prize, which will be awarded on 2 May in connection with World Press Freedom Day,the UN stated.

“The choice of Mahmoud Abu Zeid pays tribute to his courage, resistance and commitment to freedom of expression,” Maria Ressa, President of the jury.

According to UNESCO, Shawkan has been in jail since 14 August 2013 when he was arrested while covering a demonstration at Rabaa Al-Adawiya Square in Cairo. In early 2017, the prosecutor in his case reportedly called for the death penalty.

Abu Zeid's arrest and detention have been deemed arbitrary by the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detentions, and contrary to the rights and freedoms guaranteed by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.

The 25,000 dollar prize recognises a person, organisation or institution that has made an outstanding contribution to the defence or promotion of press freedom, especially in the face of danger.

The award is named in honour of Guillermo Cano Isaza, a Colombian journalist who was assassinated in front of the offices of his newspaper, El Espectador, in Bogota, on 17 December 1986. It is funded by the Cano Foundation (Colombia) and the Helsingin Sanomat Foundation (Finland).

UNESCO will lead the 25th celebration of World Press Freedom Day next week in Accra, Ghana. </s> Image copyright Iran Human Rights Monitor Image caption The activist was protesting against his conditions in prison

An Iranian political activist jailed for his messages on social media has died after spending 60 days on hunger strike, his family says.

Vahid Sayadi Nasiri had been accused of insulting Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and other offences.

He was released last March after serving two-and-a-half years in prison but detained again five months later.

The activist demanded his transfer from a high-security unit of a prison in the city of Qom to a different location.

Vahid Sayadi Nasiri was initially arrested in September 2015 and sentenced to eight years in prison for "insulting the supreme leader" and "propaganda against the state," according to the advocacy group Iran Human Rights Monitor.

The charges were related to posts he had made on his Facebook page. He was later pardoned and released early.

However he was arrested again in August, just months after his release, reportedly on similar charges.

He began his hunger strike in October in protest at the conditions of his imprisonment and his lack of access to a lawyer, according to Iran Human Rights Monitor.

He also said the principle of separation of prisoners' crimes was being violated as he was being held with ordinary criminals and was being attacked and harassed, the group said.

Conditions in the Qom prison are described as harsh, correspondents say.

The activist had reportedly been taken to hospital in the wake of his hunger strike.

His sister, Elaheh, said the family had been informed by authorities of his death. No other details were immediately available. </s> Detained Egyptian photojournalist Mahmoud Abu Zeid, widely known as Shawkan, will be awarded UNESCO’s World Press Freedom Prize, the United Nations’ cultural body said Monday.

Shawkan was arrested in August 2013 as he covered deadly clashes in Cairo between security forces and supporters of ousted Islamist president Mohamed Morsi.

He is one of 700 defendants facing charges of killing police and vandalising property during the clashes.

“The choice of Mahmoud Abu Zeid pays tribute to his courage, resistance and commitment to freedom of expression,” said Maria Ressa, head of the UNESCO jury which is awarding the prize.

Egypt’s foreign affairs ministry on Sunday voiced its “profound regret that an organisation with the status of UNESCO would honour a person accused of terrorist and criminal acts”.

Several hundred people, including three journalists, were killed during the security forces’ bloody dispersal of a pro-Morsi sit-in after the military ousted the Islamist in 2013.

Egypt’s first democratically elected president had taken office in 2012 but faced mass protests a year into his controversial rule.

Press freedom group Reporters without Borders (RSF) ranks Egypt 161st out of 180 countries on its press freedom index, saying at least 31 journalists are currently detained in the North African country.

It slammed a decision by the Egyptian prosecution in March to seek the death penalty against Shawkan.

UNESCO said it will officially award its prize to Shawkan on May 2, to mark World Press Freedom Day.
Uzbekistan dissident writer Nurulloh Muhammad Raufkhon is arrested on his return to the Central Asian country from exile.