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Feature: Uzbek activist fights mental home
By Marina Kozlova
TASHKENT, Uzbekistan, June 16 (UPI) -- A prominent human rights activist is again battling with Uzbek authorities to avoid treatment against her will in a state mental hospital.
The civil court of the Mirabadskii district in Tashkent last week ordered the continued, forced treatment of Elena Urlaeva, 45, for paranoia and schizophrenia, Urlaeva told United Press International. She remains free for the moment while appealing the decision.
Urlaeva works for the advocacy group Human Rights Society of Uzbekistan and is the chairwoman of its office in Tashkent, the capital.
"The recent court decision connects most likely with my human rights activity," Urlaeva told UPI on Sunday.
Last year Urlaeva was in a state-run mental hospital for about three months. She contests the forced treatment.
"I am not ill with paranoia. I am not ill with schizophrenia," Urlaeva told UPI.
Flyura Sharipova, Urlaeva's attorney, has said she didn't consider Urlaeva to be mentally ill.
HRSU co-worker Galina Efanova, who has known Urlaeva for two years, said: "Elena is a kind and responsive person. She is a sane woman."
On Friday, Uzbek authorities intercepted Urlaeva's attempt to picket the Tashkent mayor's office. She was picked up by what she called plainclothes Uzbek officers while she was en route with placards that decried the alleged torture and killing of detainees.
According to Urlaeva, she was forcibly taken to a district office of the mayor, and her placards confiscated. However, the deputy mayor of the Mirzo-Ulugbekskii district of Tashkent did meet with her, she said, and then allowed her to go.
Urlaeva said her placards read: "No to crimes against humanity!" "No to policy of terror!" and "Freedom to victims of repression."
Among her demands is an independent investigation of bomb attacks in Tashkent in February 1999 that killed 16 and wounded more than 100 people. The general belief is that the bomb attacks were organized and carried out by the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, a terrorist organization. Urlaeva alleges that these attacks were used by the government as a pretext for mass repressions.
She has also demanded that her passport, taken by police officers more than a year ago, be returned to her.
Friday's events began similarly to Urlaeva's first trip against her will to the mental hospital. On April 6, 2001, plainclothesmen picked her up while en route to a protest meeting at the Tashkent mayor's office.
On that occasion, she was taken first to a local police station and then transferred to the mental hospital, where psychiatrists diagnosed her with paranoia and schizophrenia. Her dissatisfaction with the government was blamed upon mental illness, they reportedly added in their diagnosis.
Last year hospital psychiatrist Kapitalina Budyakova said in court that Urlaeva's irritability and talkativeness were indications of her mental illness.
On June 30, 2001, Urlaeva left the hospital against her doctors' wishes.
Another member of the same human rights group and former people's deputy, Shovrik Ruzimuradov, 44, died in an Uzbek prison last year from injuries that activists say were sustained during torture.
Yuldash Rasulov, yet another HRSU member, was arrested May 24 in Karshi by the Uzbek Ministry of Internal Affairs. According to a ministry official, Rasulov was charged with involvement with a banned religious party called Hizb-ut-Tahrir (the Party of Liberation) and with Osama bin Ladin's terrorist organization al Qaida.
"The absurdity and falsification of this accusation against Rasulov are obvious," the HRSU said.
Human rights organizations have regularly criticized Uzbekistan for violations. "The government retained tight control over all media and other forms of expression, dealing harshly with dissidents and rights activists who sought to expose abuses," wrote Human Rights Watch in its World Report 2002. "It did not tolerate independent political parties or social movements."
HRW particularly noted: "The government pressed forward with a campaign of unlawful arrest, torture, and imprisonment of Muslims who practiced their faith outside state controls."
In March the U.S. State Department described Uzbekistan in its 2001 human rights report as "an authoritarian state with limited civil rights."
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