Belarus: Prisoner of Conscience freed
Posted: November 20, 2008
Mutabar Tadzhibaeva, women's human rights defender, was released from prison in Uzbekistan in June 2008.
© Ferghana.Ru
Uzbekistani prisoner of conscience Mutabar Tadzhibaeva was unexpectedly released from prison on June 2, 2008.
Mutabar Tadzhibaeva is a well-known human rights defender.
She is chairwoman of the Fiery Hearts Club human rights organization, a 2005 Nobel Peace Prize Nominee and winner of the 2008 Martin Ennals Award for Human Rights Defenders. She had been sentenced to eight years in prison in 2006.
After her release, the prisoner of conscience was driven to her home and reunited with her family.
Her eldest brother said that his sister looked pale and had lost weight, but that emotionally she was fine.
Tadzhibaeva passed her thanks to organizations, including Amnesty International, which had campaigned for her release.
“I spent 900 days on a ‘torture island’; 700 of those days I spent in solitary confinement,” she revealed.
“I endured only because of the support of people who were concerned about my fate. Only this gave me strength. I want to thank them for not forgetting those nearest and dearest to me - that knowledge helped me remain determined.”
Mutabar Tadzhibaeva was detained on October 7, 2005, as she was about to attend an international conference on human rights defenders in Dublin, Ireland.
She had come under a lot of pressure from the authorities for her human rights activities. She had bravely spoken out about the government's crackdown on human rights activities since mass killing in May 2005 in the city of Andizhan.
On March 6, 2007, she was sentenced to eight years' imprisonment, accused of “using funds from Western governments to prepare or distribute materials containing a threat to public order and security”.
Human rights activists have said that her release was the result of international pressure.