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Police Arrest Uzbek Women Protesting Relatives' Jailing
TASHKENT, Sept 4 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - A group of Uzbek Muslim women were arrested Tuesday when they attempted to protest the jailing of their husbands and sons for allegedly belonging to an outlawed religious group, a policeman said.
At least 10 women wearing Islamic head scarves and traditional Muslim dress were detained with their children in the Uzbek capital, Tashkent, when they tried to give the mayor a letter outlining their concerns, the BBC's online service reported.
The women said their husbands and sons were being beaten in prison, and that the government was not paying them their pensions, the BBC added.
The women were placed in buses and driven away to police stations when they attempted to approach the Tashkent's mayor's office to stage a protest, a policeman on the scene said, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported Tuesday.
Another 10 Muslim women were loaded onto another police bus, although officers claimed the group was being taken to a district administration office to allegedly discuss their complaints.
In recent years, the Uzbek authorities have arrested hundreds of people they say are members of the outlawed Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan.
The President of this populous former Soviet republic, Islam Karimov, has cracked down on both religious and political opposition since the early 1990s.
Mikhail Ardzinov, of the Independent Human Rights Society of Uzbekistan, said that some 5,000 people have been jailed in this predominantly Muslim Central Asian state on suspicion of belonging to banned Islamic groups.
Karimov recently admitted that his country's police sometimes utilized torture, and pledged radical reforms within the criminal system following reports by human rights organization of torture and abuse, according to AFP.
Karimov acknowledged that police sometimes used "illegal methods" while interrogating suspects, violating, rather than protecting, people's rights, while the courts handed out harsh punishments for minor crimes.
"These illegal methods that you are talking about are present everywhere, in all countries, even the most democratic nations," Karimov told reporters, following a speech on legal reforms made before parliament.
"This happens not only here, but also in other countries and we can't simply put an end to this by issuing another presidential order. We need to raise the moral level of society. Good should win out over evil," he said, quoted by AFP.
However, deputies were to discuss a law on introducing changes to the criminal code that would reduce the number of articles under which a person can be sentenced to death from eight to four, he told parliament.
Every year some 100 people are executed under the death penalty, although this figure is less than half the number of convicts executed in 1990, Karimov said.
"More than 1,000 people convicted of crimes against Uzbekistan's constitution will be freed under an amnesty in connection with the 10 year anniversary of independence," Karimov said.
Human rights groups believe some 7,500 people are serving sentences for alleged religious or political crimes in the former Soviet republic.
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