HRW Urges Tashkent To Release Muslim Blogger Held On 'Bogus' Charges

Human Rights Watch has called on Uzbek authorities to immediately release from custody Muslim blogger Fozilxoja Orifxojaev, who has been "in arbitrary detention for five months," facing charges of threatening public security over a social-media post. He faces a potential eight-year prison sentence.

Orifxojaev, a 41-year-old Tashkent-based blogger known for his criticism of the Uzbek authorities' restrictive religious policies, was arrested in June on petty hooliganism charges over a heated confrontation in public with a pro-government blogger and cleric.

Orifxojaev was sentenced to 15 days in jail for that. He was not released from custody after his jail term was over and instead was charged with “distributing or displaying materials containing a threat to public security and public order using mass media or telecommunication, or the Internet.”

The charge stemmed from a Facebook post in early March in which Orifxojaev discussed if it was appropriate for Muslims to congratulate non-Muslims on their religious holidays.

"It is not difficult to see that the case against Orifxojaev has zero to do with a genuine threat to public order and everything to do with the Uzbek authorities' desire to silence a government critic, who also happens to be Muslim," senior Central Asia researcher at Human Rights Watch, Mihra Rittmann said. "Uzbek authorities should drop this bogus case and release Orifxojaev from pretrial detention immediately.

"Expressing in a Facebook post a religious view about whether Muslims can or should congratulate people of other faiths on their religious holidays may be contentious to some, but it is certainly not a crime, and moreover, is speech protected by international human rights norms," Human Rights Watch said.