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Uzbekistan is one among two former Soviet republics the place consensual sexual relations between males is punishable by regulation. These charged below Uzbekistan’s Article 120 might be sentenced to as much as three years imprisonment, and homosexual and bisexual males and transgender persons are topic to threats, abuse, and torture. The regulation, past violating worldwide human rights requirements in itself, serves as a cudgel with which Uzbek police harass and extort males in Uzbekistan, no matter their precise sexual orientation.
A new report revealed by the Affiliation for Human Rights in Central Asia (AHRCA), the Eurasian Coalition on Well being, Rights, Gender and Sexual Range (ECOM), and the Worldwide Partnership for Human Rights (IPHR) calls on Uzbek authorities to decriminalize consensual sexual relations between males.
Identical-sex relations between girls should not punishable by regulation in Uzbekistan. Whereas lesbians and bisexual girls are liable to discrimination and abuse, homosexuality is distinctly punished. One member of AHRCA defined within the report that, “Uzbekistan’s patriarchal society regards males who’ve same-sex relations with such disgust that an individual who is said to be homosexual experiences a complete lack of safety which undermines their will to stay.”
Akmal, a homosexual man in Uzbekistan who spoke to The Diplomat stated, “I can’t be at liberty both on the road or at residence.”
Akmal isn’t his actual identify and it took appreciable braveness to agree to talk about this situation. Not solely are homosexual and bisexual males topic to punishment below Article 120, however they’re topic to harassment and abuse by what the report refers to as “aggressive homophobes” — individuals who maliciously search out homosexual, bisexual, and trans individuals and those that help them. They threaten or enact precise violence. These mobs additionally use on-line areas to dox people, publishing their names, photos, and call particulars alongside calls to “punish” them. There may be little recourse for these focused by such harassment, because the police additionally have interaction in comparable abusive habits.
Final yr, a weekly occasion that Uzbek blogger Miraziz Bazarov organized for anime and Okay-pop followers was disrupted by a crowd of males shouting “Allah hu Akbar!” They allegedly believed they had been breaking apart a gathering of LGBTQ individuals and supporters. Bazarov was identified for his public calls on the federal government to decriminalize same-sex relations. As RFE/RL reported on the time, Bazarov didn’t think about himself an LGBTQ activist, however quite “believes that being homosexual is a private situation and that legal guidelines shouldn’t be created to control it.”
Quickly after, Bazarov was savagely attacked. Quite than condemning the assault, the Uzbek Inside Ministry stated Bazarov had provoked the assault. When he acquired out of the hospital a month later, he was charged with libel. He was convicted and sentenced to 3 years of home arrest in January 2022.
Because the report notes, Uzbekistan’s legal guidelines run counter to human rights norms as established by the United Nations. However when the problem is raised, the everyday response from authorities officers is to assert that Uzbekistan’s Muslim society isn’t prepared to simply accept homosexuality.
Officers and public figures, like Alisher Kadyrov — a politician who as soon as stated that homosexual males, like terrorists, “don’t have any satisfaction, don’t have any nationality” — “add gas to the fireplace,” Akmal advised The Diplomat. As a substitute of “beginning to clarify to society that it’s unacceptable to make use of violence and discrimination towards everybody, together with LGBT individuals,” Uzbek politicians and public figures lean into homophobia.
After Bazarov was assaulted, Komil Allamjonov, the chairman of the board of trustees of the Public Basis for Assist and Improvement of the Nationwide Mass Media, tweeted a video of himself in late March 2020 speaking about the events with the caption: “In our nation, the place nearly all of persons are Muslims, the society doesn’t tolerate unnatural women and men (LGBT)! Our holy faith, Islam, doesn’t enable it.”
That very same month, a member of the Uzbek authorities delegation stated in the course of the nation’s Human Rights Council evaluate that “(a)lthough that life-style was not permitted by Islam and was not consistent with the Uzbek mindset, no radical measures had been taken towards individuals belonging to that neighborhood.”
In response to the IPHR report, 36 individuals had been satisfied below Article 120 in 2021. However many extra had been pressured or outright extorted by police threatening fees below Article 120 or homophobes threatening to “out” an individual or flip them into police. Because the report notes, “there isn’t any secure criticism mechanism that respects their proper to privateness and ensures that the sufferer is not going to be charged below Article 120.”
Uzbek President Shavkat Mirziyoyev has by no means publicly commented on LGBTQ points. After changing into president following the 2016 demise of the nation’s first president, Islam Karimov, Mirziyoyev pushed a broad reform program with pledges to deal with human rights points and deal with corruption.
“At first, I waited for the president to publicly share his opinion, however then I spotted that ‘an extended silence can also be an motion,’” Akmal advised The Diplomat. He stated it was horrible that the president appears to not discover how Article 120 feeds corruption and abuse. Article 120, Akmal stated, is “utilized by regulation enforcement officers to extort giant quantities of cash as a way to keep away from initiating a felony case towards LGBT individuals.”
“We’re additionally residents of Uzbekistan,” he continued. “We’re additionally , as a part of society, in creating the state’s economic system and eradicating corruption and different issues in society, however these restrictions enormously have an effect on us.”
Uzbekistan at present sits on the U.N. Human Rights Council, but Tashkent fails to uphold the fundamental rights of its LGBTQ residents. The IPHR report outlines the rights often violated in relation to LGBTQ individuals in Uzbekistan as the appropriate to be free from discrimination, from arbitrary arrest and detention, from torture and ill-treatment, in addition to the rights to well being and privateness.
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